> Skip to content
  • Published: 15 October 2015
  • ISBN: 9780375711886
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $36.00
Categories:

Book of Hours

Poems



A decade after the sudden and tragic loss of his father, we witness the unfolding of the poet's grief. "In the night I brush / my teeth with a razor," he tells us, in one of the collection's piercing two-line poems. Young captures the strange silence of bereavement: "Not the storm / but the calm / that slays me." But the poet acknowledges, even celebrates, life's passages, his loss transformed and tempered in a sequence describing 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 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."

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.

  • Published: 15 October 2015
  • ISBN: 9780375711886
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $36.00
Categories:

Also by Kevin Young

See all