情色空间

One day during his junior year, C. Dale Young 鈥�91 had an appointment with the registrar鈥檚 office to make sure he was meeting his requirements for graduation. Young was pre-med (鈥淲hen I was in college, everyone was pre-med or pre-law鈥攃learly the late 鈥�80s,鈥� he said) and pursuing a biology degree, but the meeting held a surprise: The University thought he was an English major. That was because every time he鈥檇 needed an elective, he would flip through the gargantuan course catalog and always pick an English course. If anyone had asked Young when he started school whether he wanted to double major, he would have said no. But sitting there with two degrees鈥攂iology and English鈥攎ostly completed, he decided to do both.

That decision to pursue both writing and medicine marked a path that Young has continued to follow throughout his life. Today he is a full-time physician and the lauded author of five books of poetry and a novel. The accolades have been plentiful. The Washington Post wrote that Young 鈥渃onfidently locates himself at the crucial intersection between body and soul, invoking that foremost of American poet-healers, William Carlos Williams鈥�.鈥� Young has been recognized with sought-after fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. His work has been published in the The Atlantic, The Nation, and The New Republic, and has been selected for three different volumes of The Best American Poetry. 鈥淪ometimes the ability to convey information compactly and quickly has moral grace,鈥� Robert Pinsky, the former U.S. poet laureate, has said of Young鈥檚 work. 鈥淗is writing can put garrulous narration or evasive speechifying to shame.鈥�

The majority of Young鈥檚 writing is done in the early hours of the morning, before he starts his day job as a radiation oncologist. It鈥檚 a stressful occupation centered around some of the worst, most anxiety-provoking times in people鈥檚 lives. 鈥淗is patients love him,鈥� said Lisa Boohar, a fellow radiation oncologist who鈥檚 known Young since the early 2000s and practiced with him until 2018. 鈥淗e鈥檚 very, very detail oriented. He鈥檚 super organized. He definitely feels the humanity of his patients.鈥� Young introduces himself as both a physician and a writer, but if he somehow had to give up one of his careers? 鈥淚 can鈥檛 really imagine not writing,鈥� he said. 鈥淲hen I think about it, it just seems so completely preposterous.鈥�

Now 52, young lives on the west side of San Francisco, a mile from the ocean. I visited him on a Saturday morning in November. We were scheduled to talk for an hour or two, and his plans for later that day included dropping off his dry cleaning, picking up groceries, and writing a letter of recommendation, the hodgepodge of things his strict schedule doesn鈥檛 allow during the week.

Young was born in the Caribbean. When he was small, his family moved to South Florida, where he attended Catholic schools and watched the towns swell with drunk college students on spring break, the passengers and crewmembers of cruise ships, and the winter鈥檚 snowbirds.

As a kid, Young, whose mother was an English professor, loved to read comic books and mythology. He was never conscious of the fact that he was reading poetry when enjoying something like the Odyssey, but that began to change in high school when he was tasked with memorizing 鈥淭he Second Coming,鈥� by W. B. Yeats. The poem left him 鈥渃ompletely dumbstruck,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 could not understand how someone could make something like this.鈥� He read it something like sixteen times. Probably not fully understanding it, he told me, but with a hunger. The poem seemed like a little machine. How could you make something like that? What he remembers most is how sharply the class鈥檚 attention focused on the poem once he began reciting it. There was a new stillness in the room. 鈥淎nd I was like, huh, how?鈥� he recalled. 鈥淎nd then I was more fascinated by it, because I thought, not only did he make this thing that is fascinating and strange and odd, but it has the ability to almost mesmerize people.鈥� Whatever he did with his life, he decided, he wanted to have that effect on people.

When Young started at 情色空间 as an undergrad, he thought that would happen through painting. So he joined the student publication The Stylus of Boston College, where he served as the art editor. (His main challenge was finding enough art to run, since students seemed to only submit poems or short stories.) Many of his friends at the magazine were talking excitedly about a certain poetry-writing class they were all taking, and Young felt left out. During his junior year, he approached the professor, Suzanne Matson: could he take the class, too? No, Matson told him. He hadn鈥檛 taken any of the prerequisites. Undeterred, Young came back the next day. He really liked poetry, he told her. He really wanted to take the class. No, Matson said again. Young kept returning, and by the end of the week, Matson finally acquiesced. 鈥淔ine, you can take the class,鈥� Young recalled her telling him one Friday, 鈥渂ut if you get a C, don鈥檛 complain to me.鈥� (鈥淎 C at Boston College is like failing,鈥� Young pointed out.) Then Matson told him to bring her ten of his poems by Monday. Poems he didn鈥檛 have. So he spent the weekend writing what he now remembers as 鈥渉orrible poems.鈥� But he made it into the class.

When I talked to Matson, she mentioned Young鈥檚 鈥渆xtraordinary鈥� motivation. There are a lot of talented writers who go through the creative-writing workshops at 情色空间, she told me, but not all of them keep writing and improving, and keep working through the inevitable rejections. 鈥淎nd one thing that was apparent with C. Dale was that he had this kind of drive,鈥� she recalled. 鈥淗e was very, very, very hungry to improve.鈥�

By the end of Matson鈥檚 class, Young had realized something: He needed to write. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 put the genie back in the bottle,鈥� he said. That same year, he had a similar realization about medicine. By this point, he had switched his focus from painting to pre-med, but he wasn鈥檛 sure he wanted to continue with the major until his junior year, when an advisor recommended that he volunteer at Massachusetts General Hospital. So he did. Residents and interns warned him about the stresses of the field. But, he recalled, breaking into a laugh, that only made him want to do it more.

Two decades into his career, Young still has the drive evident in his first poetry class with Suzanne Matson. His typical output, year after year, has been four poems, but by the time we talked in November, he had already written six. 鈥淗is poetry has a combination of inwardness and outwardness,鈥� Matson told me. 鈥淚t鈥檚 engaged in the world and, at the same time, it has a high level of lyric sensibility.鈥�

Many of those poems start with music. Young writes in silence. But if he starts listening to a particular piece of music over and over, that鈥檚 when he knows he鈥檚 working through an idea. The music isn鈥檛 a direct arrow鈥攖he poems and music aren鈥檛 in conversation, he said鈥攂ut more a signal flare. Classical pieces, I asked? No, he responded with laughter. Young is relaxed and approachable, which is disarming if, like me, you have a Simpsons-formed idea of poets as unsmiling beret-wearers existing in a dimension outside of the everyday world of alarm clocks and commutes and pop culture. Not classical, he said. More like Depeche Mode, or the new Dua Lipa and Elton John song. Or Britney Spears, whose song 鈥淐ircus鈥� started the churn in Young鈥檚 mind that eventually led to a poem in his most recent collection, Prometeo, which was published in 2021.

That collection, like his others, has poems of colorful landscapes full of movement, of saints and desire. There is physical pain鈥攕tories of suffering patients鈥攁nd emotional pain, of the small ways people hurt each other, and the way they go on. One of his best-known compositions, for instance, the title poem from 2011鈥檚 Torn, is about a tired, gay doctor tending to the victim of a homophobic hate crime, and reflecting on how his work entails healing both the victim and the perpetrators, were they to somehow show up, and how he has to do all of this harsh, emotional work as quickly as possible.

One day about a decade ago, Young was on a shuttle bus from Corvallis to the airport in Portland, after a talk at Oregon State University. As he sat on the shuttle, a sentence came to him. Usually when that happens, the words wind up as the end of a poem. But this line wouldn鈥檛 work that way. Maybe, he recalled thinking, it was actually part of the beginning of a story. So he started writing, and by the time he arrived at the airport, he had completed two handwritten pages, which ended up as part of the first chapter of The Affliction, a novel of short stories published in 2018.

Poetry and fiction are opposite writing styles, Young told me. If he knows the ending, it鈥檚 a poem. 鈥淚f it鈥檚 fiction, I can鈥檛 know the end of it because otherwise there鈥檚 nothing for me to do, to get to the end.鈥� Young started working on a follow-up to the novel, and by early 2020 it had reached an overwhelming 145,000 words. Sick of it, he put the book down for a year or so. But then, last spring, he felt the urge to pick it up again. News of the pandemic was changing every day at that time鈥攚as it airborne? Could it be transferred via shoe? Was there enough protective equipment available?鈥攁nd the novel was a balm. It was an entire world he created, but one that needed work. 鈥淎nd you can just dip in and lose yourself for an hour or two while you clean up paragraphs and make sure you鈥檙e not writing redundant sentences,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 something calming about that.鈥�

And so Young wakes up in the mornings to write before heading off to the hospital, the same routine he鈥檚 had for more than twenty years. Having an entire career apart from writing allows him to continue producing work at his own pace: He鈥檚 the only writer, he jokes with his editor, who wants his book to come out later, not sooner. He doesn鈥檛 worry about keeping up with any literary Joneses. For him, doing the work is the thing. While he鈥檚 working, he gets to exist solely as the artistic version of himself. When I continued to ask for the details of his morning routine, he remarked that I seemed to be thinking of it as a chore. It鈥檚 not, he said. He likes it. Without the early morning writing time, he said, 鈥淚 would feel like I wasn鈥檛 doing what I鈥檓 supposed to do.鈥�

Shelby Pope lives in Berkeley, California. She has written for NPR, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.