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Dean Young (1955-2022) was the poet laureate of Texas in 2014 and taught at the University of Texas at Austin until his death from COVID-19.
He discovered his love of poetry in the third grade when he “started writing and never stopped,” publishing 12 volumes and earning numerous prestigious awards, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination. Facing congestive heart failure, Young had a heart transplant in 2012 and his sense of impermanence and brush with death are both common themes in his imaginative poetry.
Young thought poems should find “beauty in life’s confusion” and “the connections that arise from disconnection itself.”