Kevin Young is the author of five previous collections of poetry. His book Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and won the Paterson Poetry Prize. His most recent collection, For the Confederate Dead, won the 2007 Quill Award for poetry. He has also been the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, and is currently the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing and curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University in Atlanta.
“Young reminds us that freedom has not been realized for everyone,
but his vigorous and appealing voice encourages the hope that we
may continue to understand and appreciate one another’s
perspectives and dialects.” —Phoebe Pettingell, The New Leader
“Heartfelt bluntness . . . Rich with unfettered honesty . . . A
confederation of losses, continuing Young’s exploration of
African-American culture and history in musical form: Jazz and
blues spoken here.” —Katie Peterson, Chicago Tribune
"Young reminds us that freedom has not been realized for everyone,
but his vigorous and appealing voice encourages the hope that we
may continue to understand and appreciate one another's
perspectives and dialects." -Phoebe Pettingell, The New
Leader
"Heartfelt bluntness . . . Rich with unfettered honesty . . . A
confederation of losses, continuing Young's exploration of
African-American culture and history in musical form: Jazz and
blues spoken here." -Katie Peterson, Chicago
Tribune
Much celebrated despite his relative youth, Young has set himself apart from his peers with his supple, variable, blues-inflected line employed in a series of ambitious book-length projects. This bulky yet powerful fifth collection, the title of which references Robert Lowell's famous For the Union Dead, is his first since his debut Most Way Home (1995) without a unifying conceit: its mostly somber lyrics and shorter sequences tell stories of African and African-American pilgrimages and homelands, imagined, fought for and too often lost. Young begins with a passionate elegy to Gwendolyn Brooks and closes with "Homage to Phyllis Wheatley"; in between comes a tribute to an all-black Midwestern town, terse poems adapted from Booker T. Washington's notebooks and a set of short poems, among Young's best, about rural America. Vivid stanzas describe the vibraphonist Lionel Hampton's last performance: "Arthritic solos// hover like a bee/ above the flower, finding/ the sweet center." The volume's emotional center arrives in a sequence commemorating the author's friend Philippe Wamba and recording Young's visit to Tanzania to attend Wamba's funeral. Each component of "African Elegy" takes its title from a reggae song (Wamba loved reggae), and the sequence combines travelogue with inconsolable grief: "All this might be easier if/ there wasn't a song/ still lifting us above it,/ if wind didn't trouble// my mind like water." (Jan.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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