Stones: Poems

by Kevin Young Narrated by Kevin Young

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 09/20/2021

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. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

Young transforms memories, grief into beauty . . . We are lucky he allows us to travel with him into his past and glance over his shoulder.” —Jeremy Redmon, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Distilled meditations on the deep resonance of family and home . . . Evocations of church services, rain, sun, and the music of the dark entwine nature and human longing . . . For Young, words are stones; poems are cairns.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173164858
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	09/28/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Resume

Where the train once rained
          through town like a river, where the water

rose in early summer
          & froze come winter—
where the moon

of the outhouse shone
          its crescent welcome,
where the heavens opened

& the sun wouldn’t quit—
          past the gully or gulch or holler or ditch

I was born.
          Or, torn—
Dragged myself

atop this mountain
          fueled by flour, butter-
milk, grease fires.

Where I’m from
          women speak in burnt tongues

& someone’s daddy dug
          a latrine so deep up from the dark

dank bottom springs a tree.

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