{"title":"Kevin Young","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"night-watch-poems","title":"Night Watch: Poems","description":"\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eNOTABLE BOOK - A \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e Editors' Choice - From the award-winning poet at the height of his career, a book of personal and American experiences, both beautiful and troubling, touching on the generative cycle of loss and renewal \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Kevin Young is a poet of exceptional depth and sensitivity. . . . Let yourself focus on every phrase.\" --Ron Charles, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eNight Watch \u003c\/i\u003econtinues one of the most vital currents in contemporary poetry, transforming history and its silences into lyric through the poet's eloquent invitation: 'O wounded soul, \/ speak.'\" \u003ci\u003e--The New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFollowing on his exquisite \u003ci\u003eStones\u003c\/i\u003e, Kevin Young's new collection, written over the span of sixteen years, shapes stories of loss and legacy, inspired in part by other lives. After starting in the bayous of his family's Louisiana, Young journeys to further states of mind in \"All Souls,\" evoking \"The whale \/ who finds the shore \/ \u0026amp; our poor prayers.\" Another central sequence, \"The Two-Headed Nightingale,\" is spoken by Millie-Christine McCoy, the famous conjoined African American \"Carolina Twins.\" Born into enslavement, stolen, and then displayed by P. T. Barnum and others, the twins later toured the world as free women, their alto and soprano voices harmonizing their own way. Young's poem explores their evolving philosophical selfhood and pluralities: \"As one we sang, \/we spake-- \/ She was the body \/ I the soul \/ Without one \/ Perishes the whole.\"\u003cbr\u003e In \"Darkling,\" a cycle of poems inspired by Dante's \u003ci\u003eDivine Comedy\u003c\/i\u003e, Young expands and embroiders the circles of Hell, drawing a cosmology of both loneliness and accompaniment, where \"the dead don't know \/ what to do \/ with themselves.\" Young writes of grief and hope as familiar yet surprising states: \"It's like a language, \/ loss--,\" he writes, \"learnt only \/ by living--there--.\" Evoking the history of poetry, from the darkling thrush to the darkling plain, Young is defiant and playful on the way through purgatory to a kind of paradise. When he goes, he warns, \"don't dare sing \u003ci\u003eAmazing Grace\u003c\/i\u003e\"--that \"National \/ Anthem of Suffering.\" Instead, he suggests, \"When I Fly Away, \/ Don't dare hold no vigil . . . Just burn the whole \/ Town on down.\"\u003cbr\u003e This collection will stand as one of Young's best--his voice shaping sorrow with music, wisdom, heartache, and wit.","brand":"Kevin Young","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43887305719850,"sku":"9780593319628","price":29.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/night-watch-poems-5648483.jpg?v=1765186393"},{"product_id":"art-of-losing-poems-of-grief-and-healing","title":"Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e \"Kevin Young has thoughtfully gathered many of these sorrowful perambulations and grievous plummets.\" -Billy Collins\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Art of Losing \u003c\/i\u003eis the first anthology of its kind, delivering poetry with a purpose. Editor Kevin Young has introduced and selected 150 devastatingly beautiful poems that embrace the pain and heartbreak of mourning. Divided into five sections (Reckoning, Remembrance, Rituals, Recovery, and Redemption), with poems by some of our most beloved poets as well as the best of the current generation of poets, \u003ci\u003eThe Art of Losing\u003c\/i\u003e is the ideal gift for a loved one in a time of need and for use by therapists, ministers, rabbis, and palliative care workers who tend to those who are experiencing loss. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAmong the poets included: Elizabeth Alexander, W. H. Auden, Amy Clampitt, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Louise Gluck, Ted Hughes, Galway Kinnell, Kenneth Koch, Philip Larkin, Li-Young Lee, Philip Levine, Marianne Moore, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Robert Pinsky, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, Derek Walcott, and James Wright.","brand":"Kevin Young","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43887305785386,"sku":"9781608194667","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/art-of-losing-poems-of-grief-and-healing-6952465.jpg?v=1765186393"},{"product_id":"jelly-roll-a-blues","title":"Jelly Roll: A Blues","description":"In this jaunty and intimate collection, Kevin Young invents a language as shimmying and comic, as low-down and high-hearted, as the music from which he draws inspiration. With titles such as \"Stride Piano,\" \"Gutbucket,\" and \"Can-Can,\" these poems have the sharp completeness of vocalized songs and follow a classic blues trajectory: praising and professing undying devotion (\"To watch you walk \/ cross the room in your black \/ corduroys is to see \/ civilization start\"), only to end up lamenting the loss of love (\"No use driving \/ like rain, past \/ where you at\"). As Young conquers the sorrow left on his doorstep, the poems broaden to embrace not just the wisdom that comes with heartbreak but the bittersweet wonder of triumphing over adversity at all. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSexy and tart, playfully blending an African American idiom with traditional lyric diction, Young's voice is pure American: joyous in its individualism and singing of the self at its strongest.","brand":"Kevin Young","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43887305916458,"sku":"9780375709890","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/jelly-roll-a-blues-3787530.jpg?v=1765186391"},{"product_id":"book-of-hours-poems","title":"Book of Hours: Poems","description":"A decade after the sudden and tragic loss of his father, we witness the unfolding of grief. \"In the night I brush \/ my teeth with a razor,\" he tells us, in one of the collection's piercing two-line poems. Capturing the strange silence of bereavement (\"Not the storm \/ but the calm \/ that slays me\"), Kevin Young acknowledges, even celebrates, life's passages, his loss transformed and tempered in a sequence about the birth of his son: in \"Crowning,\" he delivers what is surely one of the most powerful birth poems written by a man, describing \"her face \/ full of fire, then groaning your face \/ out like a flower, blood-bloom, \/ crocused into air.\" Ending this book of both birth and grief, the gorgeous title sequence brings acceptance, asking \"What good\/are wishes if they aren't \/ used up?\" while understanding \"How to listen \/ to what's gone.\" Young's frank music speaks directly to the reader in these elemental poems, reminding us that the right words can both comfort us and enlarge our understanding of life's mysteries.","brand":"Kevin Young","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43887305981994,"sku":"9780375711886","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/book-of-hours-poems-1877757.jpg?v=1765186391"},{"product_id":"for-the-confederate-dead","title":"For the Confederate Dead","description":"The award-winning \"lively and excellent collection\" \u003ci\u003e(Los Angeles Times) \u003c\/i\u003eabout the South and its legacy, about African-American griefs and passages, from the author of \u003ci\u003eJelly Roll \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eBlack Maria\u003c\/i\u003e, a poet who has \"set himself apart from his peers with his supple, variable, blues-inflected lines\" \u003ci\u003e(Publishers Weekly).\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Kevin Young","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43887306047530,"sku":"9780375711411","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/for-the-confederate-dead-2931965.jpg?v=1765186392"},{"product_id":"ardency-a-chronicle-of-the-amistad-rebels","title":"Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels","description":"\u003cb\u003eNow in paperback, a haunting chorus of voices that tells the story of the captivity, education, language, hopes, dreams, and fight for freedom, of the African Americans abducted in the \u003ci\u003eAmistad\u003c\/i\u003e rebellion.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBased on the 1840 mutiny on board the slave ship \u003ci\u003eAmistad, Ardency\u003c\/i\u003e begins with \"Buzzard,\" a sequence of poems told in the voice of the interpreter for the captive rebels, who were jailed in New Haven. In \"Correspondence,\" we encounter the remarkable letters to John Quincy Adams and others that the captives wrote from jail. The book culminates in \"Witness,\" a libretto chanted by Cinque, the rebel leader, who yearns for his family and freedom while eloquently evoking the Amistads' conversion and life in America. As Young conjures this array of characters, interweaving the liberation cry of Negro spirituals and the indoctrinating wordplay of American primers, he delivers his signature songlike immediacy at the service of an epic built on the ironies, violence, and virtues of American history.","brand":"Kevin Young","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43887306113066,"sku":"9780375711619","price":27.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/ardency-a-chronicle-of-the-amistad-rebels-8961858.jpg?v=1765186391"},{"product_id":"to-repel-ghosts-the-remix","title":"To Repel Ghosts: The Remix","description":"\u003cb\u003eRevamped from its original \"double album\" version of 350 pages into this unique \"remix,\" \u003ci\u003eTo Repel Ghosts\u003c\/i\u003e captures the dynamic work and brief life of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn spare, jazzlike verse Kevin Young tells the story of Basquiat's rise from the mock prophet and graffiti artist SAMO to one of the hottest painters of the 1980s (\"blue-chip Basquiat \/ playing the bull \/ market\"), exploring the artist's bouts with fame and heroin, mourning his untimely death, and celebrating his legacy. Along the way Young riffs on Basquiat's paintings and sayings, on the music he loved, on the artists he ran with (Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, among them), and on the black heroes (Charlie Parker, Muhammad Ali, Billie Holiday) who inspired him. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eYoung's poetic channeling of Basquiat--a jostling, poignant brand of downtownspeak--makes for an urban epic in the tradition of Langston Hughes's \"A Dream Deferred.\" \u003ci\u003eTo Repel Ghosts\u003c\/i\u003e, along with Young's \u003ci\u003eJelly Roll: A Blues\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eBlack Maria\u003c\/i\u003e, his recent book of film noir verse, forms an American trilogy--\u003ci\u003eDevil's Music\u003c\/i\u003e--that explores other art forms through poetry. In its creation, Yound has become a poet whose work speaks both for and beyond his genre, with a music all its own.","brand":"Kevin Young","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43887306178602,"sku":"9780375710230","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/to-repel-ghosts-the-remix-1001381.jpg?v=1765186391"},{"product_id":"emile-and-the-field","title":"Emile and the Field","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eIn this lyrical picture book from an award-winning poet, a young boy cherishes a neighborhood field\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003ethroughout the changing seasons. With stunning illustrations and a charming text, this beautiful story celebrates a child's relationship with nature.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eThere was a boy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003enamed Emile\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ewho fell\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ein love with a field.\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eIt was wide\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eand blue--\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eand if you could have\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eseen it\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eso would've you.\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eEmile loves the field close to his home--in spring, summer, and fall, when it gives him bees and flowers, blossoms and leaves. But not as much in winter, when he has to share his beautiful, changeable field with other children...and their sleds. This relatable and lyrical ode to one boy's love for his neighborhood field celebrates how spending time in nature allows children to dream, to imagine...and even to share.","brand":"Kevin Young","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43887306244138,"sku":"9781984850423","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/emile-and-the-field-3868296.jpg?v=1765186390"},{"product_id":"dear-darkness","title":"Dear Darkness","description":"Delivered in Young's classic bluesy tone, this powerful collection of poems about the American family, smoky Southern food, and the losses that time inevitably brings \"bristles with life, nerve and, best of all, wit\" (\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle).\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Kevin Young","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43887306309674,"sku":"9780307264428","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/dear-darkness-5845433.jpg?v=1765186389"}],"url":"https:\/\/thepoetryshop.com\/collections\/kevin-young.oembed","provider":"The Poetry Shop LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}