Stones
Poems
-
- $10.99
Publisher Description
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).
"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. "Like heat he seeks them, / my son, thirsting / to learn those / he don't know / are his dead."
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. Stones becomes an ode to Young's home places and his dear departed, and to what of them—of us—poetry can save.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With superbly crafted poems that engage the past and the present, Young (Brown: Poems) delivers another ambitious collection across seven lyrically powerful sections. The book's epigraph, "the stones hope to remember," signals Young's interest in history and memorializing, echoed in "Ivy," which ends on "the quiet/ of this place, the graves/ awaiting names," and in "Sting," "the agony/ of growing, the great/ effort, trying// not to die." Graves prove a powerful motif throughout. In "Vault," Young recalls his toddler son, who "skips stone// to stone, hollering happily/ on the slabs with bodies/ unmarked beneath." In the subsequent poem, "Boneyard," the image grows more historically complicated, "Like heat he seeks them,/ my son, thirsting/ to learn those/ he don't know/ are his dead." "Grief's evergreen," he announces in "Spruce," but there is ample hope across the collection, too, most of it derived from love. "Till the end/ we sing/ into the wind," he writes in "Dolor," while other poems emphasize the redeeming roles of family and parenting. These elegant, measured poems offer insight into the troubled moment through an exhumation of the past, while giving the reader plenty of depth and beauty to carry into the future.
