"Ash Ode" by Dean Young
Let's gather after some time apart and contemplate distance and longing.
Hello lovely gatherers. Thank you for joining me in your mailbox again. I’ve missed you. It’s been a while, but hopefully the distance only made the heart grow fonder. Here’s to more gathering this summer.
I have a poem here by Dean Young that has been sitting in my drafts for months now, both stumping and entrancing me. Once a week, I have come back to this poem to try and parse out the meaning, failing miserably every time. Finally, I decided to do some research. Dean Young’s poetry leans surrealist, which means his poems follow random associations and ambitious leaps in logic. One of the pillars of surrealism is to unleash the imagination by breaking free of the constraints of logic and proper grammar. Surrealism allows artists to untether objects from their context in order to make new associations and meaning. About his own work, Young once said:
“I think to tie meaning too closely to understanding misses the point.” -Jubilat interview, quoted by the Poetry Foundation
Today, let’s gather and explore this poem together.
Ash Ode
by Dean Young
When I saw you ahead I ran two blocks Shouting your name then realizing it wasn’t You but some alarmed pretender, I went on Running, shouting now into the sky, Continuing your fame and luster. Since I’ve Been incinerated, I’ve oft returned to this thought, That all things loved are pursued and never caught, Even as you slept beside me you were flying off. At least what’s never had can’t be lost, the sieve Of self stuck with just some larger chunks, jawbone, Wedding ring, a single repeated dream, A lullaby in every elegy, descriptions Of the sea written in the desert, your broken Umbrella, me claiming I could fix it.
Let’s begin with the title. An ode is a lyrical poem written in celebration and reverence of something. Odes were common in Ancient Greece, often written about gods, goddesses, and heroes, then sung or chanted aloud. Young wrote this poem as a celebration of ash. In this poem, the speaker is incinerated becoming ash and leaving behind all the tangible parts of the self. Young celebrates these pieces. Without incineration, the speaker would not be able to see the real pieces of self. Without ash, the speaker would not be able to see what is really theirs: a symbolic ring, their jawbone, the memory of intending to fix an umbrella. In the sieve, the speaker sees that they never “caught” their love. Instead, their life was spent in pursuit of the person they love, but that person is not a part of the self.
I love the opening scene of this poem: the speaker running down the street trying to get the attention of a beloved “you.” The speaker quickly realizes they are chasing after a stranger, or an “alarmed pretender.” Even in describing a stranger on the street, Young opts for words that alter the reader’s perception of this person’s identity. They are alarmed by the speaker chasing after them and shouting, but Young also describes this stranger as a pretender. Is he suggesting this stranger is pretending to be “you?” Or are they pretending to be alarmed?
Here, I’ll restate the importance of remembering that this is a surrealist poem. While I have questions about what exactly Young means in this phrase, I choose instead to accept it and understand that in the world of this poem, a stranger equates to an alarmed pretender. I’m following Young’s advice and choosing not to ruminate too hard on the meaning. If I focus too much on the literal meaning of images and phrases in his poem, I would get stuck on this line: “Since I’ve / Been incinerated, I’ve oft returned to this thought.”
Instead, I look at this line and envision the speaker as ash flying through the air, shouting after “you” and alarming passersby. All of this leads up to my favorite line of the poem:
That all things loved are pursued and never caught
The speaker comments that even when they sleep next to their lover, the beloved flies off to be pursued, but never caught. The rest of the poem describes what remains after the incineration, now that the speaker is ash without their lover. A sieve separates the remnants of self, sifting through the ash and leaving pieces like a jawbone and a ring. There are also intangibles left behind in the tray of the sieve after the ash of your body floats away: lullabies, elegies, descriptions of the sea written in the desert that are ever-changing and never seen.
The other piece of self that gets separated from the ash is “your broken / umbrella.” Why did the speaker choose this memory to hang onto? Because the speaker remembers he responded by “claiming that I could fix it.” Young chose this as the last line of this poem.
Where does the ash go now? Will it spend eternity chasing? Will it eventually settle and rest, even if not in bed beside “you?” Where do we go from here?
If you enjoyed this poem and want to read more… you can find more poetry by Dean Young here.
If you are looking for your next beach read… I recently finished reading Hanif Abdurraqib’s 2017 essay collection The Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. Highly recommend.
If you want to try writing poetry… write a poetry about a summer day—what makes it different than every other season?