Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Stones becomes an ode to Young's home places and his dear departed, and to what of them-of us-poetry can save. Whether it's the fireflies of a Louisiana summer caught in a mason jar (doomed by their collection), or his grandmother, Mama Annie, who latches the screen door when someone steps out for just a moment, all that makes up our flickering precarious joy, all that we want to protect, is lifted into the light in this moving book. "Like heat he seeks them, / my son, thirsting / to learn those / he don't know / are his dead." "We sleep long, / if not sound," Kevin Young writes early on in this exquisite gathering of poems, "Till the end/ we sing / into the wind." In scenes and settings that circle family and the generations in the American South-one poem, "Kith," exploring that strange bedfellow of "kin"-the speaker and his young son wander among the stones of their ancestors. Stones becomes an ode to Young's home places and his dear departed, and to what of them-of us-poetry can save.A book of loss, looking back, and what binds us to life, by a towering poetic talent, called "one of the poetry stars of his generation" ( Los Angeles Times).
A book of loss, looking back, and what binds us to life, by a towering poetic talent, called "one of the poetry stars of his generation" ( Los Angeles Times).
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