Art and Science in “The Second Person” by C. Dale Young
C. Dale Young Divided into 4 parts, The Second Person by C. Dale Young examines first the physical body with its emotions and sensations, then moves into the scientific where death and sciences attempts to heal become a major focus before moving into a 27 poem series of triptychs that merge the two. Finally, the book shifts focus and expands its view to examine the world. Young’s poems comfortably flow between the inner and external world as is common in other current poets, but they also shift between scientific and emotional views of the world: one poem for example, shifts between the idea of the mathematical notation of summation that the symbol represents and a less literal view that moves the purely scientific term into the emotional world of the patient who is saved by the summation of the Doctor’s education.