Winner of 2002 Norma Farber First Book Award Finalist

Gifted with a vivid and exact skill, C. Dale Young's writing resembles an intricate anatomy lesson. His powers of observation probe the small energies of the natural world. Again and again the ordinary details of life transform themselves under the delicate pressure of his words--the movement of birds' wings, the color and texture of tropical flowers, the study of the ocean waves, the "scalpel of light" cutting through the beginning of the day. The language of Young's poems evokes an ultimate sense of place through a gorgeous marriage of tone and diction that echoes James Merrill and Amy Clampitt. As he meticulously maps out human passions and emotions, he explores both the surfaces and depths of everything that he surveys. His confident and polished verse unfolds intricate layers of landscape, seeking the order that lies beneath the unruly patterns of our lives.

C. Dale Young grew up in the Caribbean and South Florida. He received both M.F.A. and M.D. degrees from the University of Florida. He now practices medicine at the University of California in San Francisco and also serves as the poetry editor of New England Review. His work has been published in The Best American Poetry 1996, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Partisan Review, Poetry, and Yale Review

"The Day Underneath the Day is very much a book of inquiry: how do we negotiate safe passage over the mare incognita that is variously art and the making of it, the body and the mystery of it, identity both inherited and imposed? These are poems of formal grace and slant homage, map-and-dazzle, a vision as lush as it is-refreshingly-exacting."

--Carl Phillips, author of Pastoral
 

"This book is dignified, subtle, feelingful, and delicate. I admire the understated thoughtfulness of many of these poems, their willingness to flirt with the metaphysical while remaining deeply motivated by the visual, tactile world."

--Rosanna Warren, author of Stained Glass