Kevin Young is the author of ten books of poetry, most recently Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems, 1995–2015. His Book of Hours was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Prize; his book The Grey Album won the PEN Open Award, the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. This essay has been adapted from Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, longlisted for the National Book Award.
Nature’s Nature
Mar/Apr 2021
Bouquet
Tell the sky — quit stealing you away. Above, storm clouds only threaten & will not stay. The sun finds us like fear, or family, fills the stomach & asks to […]
Nature’s Nature
Mar/Apr 2021
Squall
Today the sun rained down on us for hours before rain shone silver down into the already muddy ground. Each day a squall chases us indoors & sends the dogs […]
Nature’s Nature
Mar/Apr 2021
Lilies
Almost June yet the blooms are already done here among my grandfather & foremothers & my father planted too early — we miss you brother. He will not see another May, […]
Nature’s Nature
Mar/Apr 2021
Evensong
What music the dark makes. The evensong of frogs like monks in the dusk making the cedars their abbey, us not their god but believers who cannot read yet still […]
Nonfiction
Nov/Dec 2017
Cowboys & Aliens
An excerpt from Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News © 2017 by Kevin Young; published by Graywolf Press. We have our hands full […]
Poetry
Mar/Apr 2016
Homage to Phillis Wheatley
Phillis was brought from Africa to America in the Year 1761, between Seven and Eight Years of Age. Without any Assistance from School Education, and by only what she was […]
Poetry
Spring 2011
Greening
It never ends, the bruise of being—messy, untimely, the breath of newborns uneven, half pant, as they find their rhythm, inexact as vengeance. Son, while you sleep we watch you […]
Poetry
Spring 2011
Thirst
What blossoms is loss— last years ash fills a tin from the grill that fed us all last summer like a father— that black belly rusty, its grate you scrape, […]
Poetry
Summer 2008
Ode to Gumbo
For weeks I have waited for a day without deathor doubt. Instead the sky set afire or the flood filling my face. A stubborn drain nothing can fix. Every day […]
Poetry
Summer 2008
Grievous Angel
Hope you know a lot more than you believe in — Gram Parsons I used to believe more than I knew—now there’s only the rain I rely on, season of […]
Poetry
Summer 2008
I Shall Be Released
What we love will leave us or is it we leave what we love, I forget— Today, belly full enough to walk the block after all week too cold outside to […]
Poetry
Winter 2005
The Killer
Born on a showboat headed upriver, he thought the world a gamble & the moon a gin- soaked ice cube, whole month of melting. He looked a lot like money, […]
Poetry
Winter 2005
The Sucker
I want to be chewed like the pencil she used to dial the cops with—that would be enough— • My Method- acted disbelief as the pinkertons storm the building, flooding […]
Kenyon Review Classics
Spring 1999
Responsible Delight: Revaluation: John Berryman
Like his raucous character Henry, protagonist of his fragmented epic, The Dream Songs, John Berryman emerges in his work and life a “human American man.” The issues the Dream Songs […]
Poetry
Spring 1998
Brothers Sausage
The trees told nobody what, that day, we did—we died. Laid down with our cans of deviled ham & closed our eyes—two valises full of Van Camp’s Pork & Beans— […]
Poetry
Spring 1998
Riddle Me This Batman
Doesn’t everyone die a dozen times, ready or not? ZLONK! KAPOW! @;#$%*!?! The cancer slow, or sudden as heart’s failure—desire desire—whether suicide or mass murder, we all share final breath. […]
Poetry
Spring 1998
Oleo
Between Follies the funniest man alive or dead, emerges—his behind feathered, legs a rooster’s—Mama’s Little Baby Loves Shortenin Shortenin Mama’s Lil Baby Loves Shortnin Bread— come a mighty long way […]
Poetry
Spring 1998
Revised Undiscovered Genius of the Mississippi Delta
LINER NOTE — The following cuts are taken from the double album, To Repel Ghosts, based on the work of the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Of Haitian & Puerto Rican […]
Poetry
Spring 1998
Shrine outside Basquiat’s Studio September 1988
Back on Great Jones his face against the facade fronting the carriage house rented from Warhol— inside, his suits stiffen from starch, spilt paint. He’s bought the farm whole, enchilada […]
Poetry
Winter 1995
Belongings
What we owned was road, stretched, chitlin-clean. My virgin dreams itched skin, woolen. Ten when the decade turned, I believed in all that stuff: parents, a family room packed away, […]
Poetry
Winter 1995
Tuff Buddies
for Robert Scott No sign or behind warmingcould keep us from careeningdown hills or popping wheelies;the blue brake on our BigWheels only helped us peelout, skid. Robert & I were […]
Poetry
Winter 1993
Central Standard Time
Down below, everywhere, allthe black skycaps have disappearedsince last time, last time being always,or at least your childhood of air. Gonelike that. At the curb, a mother overtips the new […]
Poetry
Winter 1993
No Offense
If you wonder why I’m not laughing, go ask Brian, the sixth grade cut-up the one with the most dirty jokes who requested the tribal African song Tina Singu, each […]
Poetry
Winter 1993
Driving Independence Day
War built the roads you cross. Men with bad hearts or flat feet broke rocks, backs, laying this pave like stateside wives. Strawberries grow red as handpainted signs which urge […]
Weekend Reads
No Offense
From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Winter 1993, Vol. XV, No. 1 If you wonder why I’m not laughing, go ask Brian, the sixth grade cut-up the one with the […]