Prometeo

An unflinching reckoning with the traumas of one’s life and those inherited through a history of exacted injustices
Some men find nothing, and others / find omens everywhere, writes C. Dale Young in Prometeo, a collection whose speaker is a proverbial child of fire. In poems that thrive off of their distinct voice, the speaker confronts generational and lived trauma and their relationship to his multi-ethnicity. We are presented with the idea of the past’s burial in the body and its constellatory manifestations–both in the speaker and those around him–in disease and pain, but also in strength and a capacity for intimacy with others and nature. Grounded in precise language, Young’s examination of the past and its injuries turns into a celebration of the self. In stark, exuberant relief, the speaker proclaims …I was splendidly blended, genetically engineered / for survival. Resilient, Young’s poems find beauty in landscape, science, and meditation.