In Torn, C. Dale Young continues his earnest investigations into the human, depicted as both spiritual being and a process, as "the soul and its attendant concerns" and as a device that "requires charge, small / electrical impulses / racing through our bodies." What Young tells and shows us, what his poems let us hear, does not aim to reassure or soothe. These are poems written from "white and yellow scraps / covered with words and words and more words-- // I may never find the right words to describe this."