Please join us for the release of American Analects, poems by Gary Young and Feasting on the World, an exhibition at MK Contemporary Art Gallery, paintings by Gene Holton paired with poems by Gary Young. Gary Young will be reading from his new book inspired by his friend and mentor Gene Holton.

Presented by MK Contemporary Art Gallery and co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute, UC Santa Cruz: Special Collection Archives, UC Santa Cruz: The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History; Bookshop Santa Cruz; The Hive Poetry Collective; and Santa Cruz Public Libraries.

More info at: www.mkcontemporary.art.

American Analects uses the Analects of Confucius as an inspiration to mediate upon the life, death, and the subsequent loss of the poet’s influential, beloved mentor—the painter Gene Holtan. These poems are juxtaposed with poems about other losses—of parents, of friends and friends of friends. Still, this is not a dour book. Many poems celebrate our ability to inspire, to comfort, and to nurture one another. In the end, American Analects is about resiliency, about moving on from personal loss, from the pandemic, and from catastrophic fires, to rejoice in what remains.

Gary Young is the author of several collections of poetry. His most recent books are That’s What I Thought, winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award from Persea Books, and Precious Mirror, translations from the Japanese. His other books include Even So: New and Selected Poems; Pleasure; No Other Life, winner of the William Carlos Williams Award; Braver Deeds, winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize; Days; The Dream of a Moral Life, which won the James D. Phelan Award; and Hands. He has received a Pushcart Prize, and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the Vogelstein Foundation, among others. In 2009 he received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Young was the first Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, and in 2012 he was named Santa Cruz County Artist of the Year. Since 1975 he has designed, illustrated, and printed limited edition letterpress books and broadsides at his Greenhouse Review Press. His fine print work is represented in numerous collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Getty Museum, and special collection libraries throughout the U.S. and Europe. He teaches creative writing and directs the Cowell Press at UC Santa Cruz.