Dean Young (1955 – August 23, 2022) was an American poet in the lineage of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and Kenneth Koch.

He also found that using mangled quotes from technical journals, as he experimented with in First Course in Turbulence, allowed for a kind of collage in which tones confront each other.

Citing Breton as an influence, Young found surrealism useful in understanding the imagination and removing the boundaries between real and unreal.

The possibility of his death and encounters with impermanence became frequent themes in his poetry, especially in Fall Higher, which was published days after his transplant.

[5][6] In announcing his passing, Copper Canyon Press also shared that Young had submitted an as-yet unpublished manuscript, whose final lines were: "Some cries never reach us/Even though they're our own.