#kevin young

[kiisuuumii]

Kevin Young, "Russet," Stones

[lillyli-74]

The heart, it hoards, how I know this..

~Kevin Young

[havingapoemwithyou]

book rate by Kevin Young

[firstfullmoon]

What’s left now / to praise? Everything.

Kevin Young, from “Elegy for Heaney”

[aaknopf]

Welcome to poetry month! In a time of wars and painful divisions both at home and abroad, we hope in the next thirty days to offer what poetry can: the signal voice of the individual in darkness, the value inherent in truthful seeing, the connection to hearts and minds different from our own. We’ll begin with a powerful connector: Kevin Young, whose volume Stones comes out in paperback this week. Here he reflects on “kith and kin”; throughout the month, we’ll revisit the work of some of our Knopf ancestor kin and celebrate their wisdom alongside the vital contemporary voices.

Kith

All week I have wondered            what kith meant—

always paired            with kin, can it be the same thing?

Kin seems like like, like kind, as in our kind,

us—kindness,            we hope, or something to like.

Kith is more            helpless, married as it is to kin—

Kith is what you find            in the cemetery, names effaced from their graves,

names you may not            know, but share, or share though don’t yet know.

Kith is not            yesterday— that’s ancestry—nor

is it today—kin            keeps that close— no, kith

is tomorrow            & who knows? Is outliving

the dead, but means            the dead too, resting here on the sill

among the blue            bottles—both the flies & the glass

that once held what? Kith is that. The pair

of shoes that still            keep the wearer’s shape after removed—

whether moments ago, dog-tired,            or years later, still standing—

though nobody asked            them to—long beyond when the wearer’s gone.

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Stones by Kevin Young.

Browse other books by Kevin Young and follow him on Instagram @thehungryear. 

Join Kevin Young in Cambridge, MA, at the opening of the ARTS FIRST festival, on April 24 at 5pm, when he will receive the 2024 Harvard Arts Medal. The festival (April 24-28, 2024), showcases the creativity of the Harvard arts community through performances, art exhibitions, and art-making activities. 

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.

[soulmaking]

Kevin Young

[hillhousebi]

kevin young, ditty

[mythologyofblue]

I now know pain is part of any journey- that this is the opposite of grief, but grief the only way I know to describe waiting and waiting without knowing, hoping one day joy will arrive.

-Kevin Young, Book of Hours: Poems

[multimikedc]

"The boys skateboarding beyond even their bodies have got it right - fling yourselves, friends, into whatever guardrail or concrete the world has." -- Kevin Young

[sailor-dyke]

[kiisuuumii]

Kevin Young, "Ivy," Stones

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

From Kevin Young’s "Book of Hours"

[havingapoemwithyou]

russet by Kevin Young

[firstfullmoon]

Kevin Young, “Book Rate”

[heart-songs]

Colostrum

We are not born with tears. Your

first dozen cries are dry.

It takes some time for the world to arrive

and salt the eyes.

- Kevin Young

[readtilyoudie]

Comfort with yourself is equated with being able to write—despite the fact that not writing is actually the norm and we should perhaps applaud what is there, rather than what ain’t.

The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness by Kevin Young