| Title | : | Stones: Poems |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1524732567 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781524732561 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 128 |
| Publication | : | First published September 28, 2021 |
"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.
Stones: Poems Reviews
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Sharp and deeply cutting; a look at what binds us to our identity. Kevin Young has the ability to transport the reader out of the common day to day mechanical observations and flay open what is underneath - that raw core we all encounter when life allows us to meditae on what really matters. Form and flow of conceptualization is superb.
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I've read two other Kevin Young collections,
Book of Hours: Poems and
Brown: Poems. Here's an unexpected advantage to using Goodreads: Looking back on past reviews, you see trends.
Examples? In one I complained about the profusion of extremely short lines (usually 3-5 words). In other I noted a section of the book that was exclusively short-lined tercets.
Ah. Two observations that feed THIS review. Except for one, single-stanza'd list poem, this entire new collection of Young's is the poetry of tercets, occasionally with a single-lined finish. In all cases, too, the middle line is indented two tabs.
Young knows what he likes and likes what he knows, so for that he goes. Lots of random (not formal) rhyming and slant rhyming too. But again, no designs.
The trouble? The constant diet of same old, same old leavened his work with monotony. Not a great thing. Some enjoyable poems here, to be sure, but a lot of take-it-or-leave-it as well.
Beautiful artwork on the cover. Hardback, as you'd expect from a veteran hand who happens to be a professor and the poetry editor at The New Yorker (raises hand to ask where he finds time in a day).
Here's a poem I enjoyed in the collection that appeared in The Orion (note: you'll have to imagine the middle-lined indentations on second lines of the tercets as GR is not HTML friendly, except for a few limited tricks like "roll over" and, at times, "play dead"):
Egrets
Kevin Young
Some say beauty
may be the egret
in the field
who follows after
the cows
sensing slaughter—
but I believe
the soul is neither
air nor water, not
this winged thing
nor the cattle
who moan
to make themselves
known.
Instead, the horses
standing almost fifteen
hands high—
like regret they come
most the time
when called.
Hungry, the greys eat
from your palm,
tender-toothed—
their surprising
plum-dark tongues
flashing quick
& rough as a match—
your hand, your
arm, startled
into flame. -
This cover is fire. I liked what I could understand of this collection and know it’s better than I could comprehend. It just felt hard to click with because I knew Young was operating at a level I can’t. I just didn’t “get” a lot of it. I did love the poem “Joy”. A standout for me. I want to read about Young and this collection and then revisit.
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Excellent collection of very personal poetry by the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Stones is an excellent collection of poems about family, history, death, and remembrance. Young's poems are rooted in the red earth of the south and feature images of decayed shotgun shacks, the families who have lived and worked the land for generations, and reminiscences of those who have moved away but but still find their identity in this history.
I'm a casual poetry reader and sometimes stumble over collections where poem styles change from page to page but Kevin Young's poems have a consistent structure that makes reading easier to do after you get into his rhythm. That said half the enjoyment of poetry is reading one multiple times to get a cadence that echoes with you and I quite enjoyed that with his work.
P.S. I'd like thank my local librarians for doing such a bang up job with choosing books for the poetry displays, I'd never have found this without them. -
Love this collection so much. Kevin Young expertly crafted each and every poem in this collection. His images were everything. I sensed the speaker’s anxiety towards trying to understand how to cope with his own grief. The moments where the speaker is in the cemetery really stood out to me. The images of a long gone home really captured that loss that the speaker grapples with throughout the entire collection. In the end we get a poem that explodes with language and images that wraps the speaker’s journey beautifully. Absolutely incredible work here. I know I missed talking about other things in this collection like the speaker’s relationship with his son, his father, and the women in his life. Or the major role that the weather plays in this collection. Or even the meaning behind the title of this collection. But hopefully after I sit down with my thoughts I can build a better review for the community because this book deserves it.
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Kevin Young is one of my favorite poets, and this is the third book I’ve read of his poems in addition to the 5-star anthology he compiled that I recommend as a condolence gift: The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing. I’m especially fond of his family poems and odes to Southern cooking, having grown up with many of the same foods myself. If you don’t know his work, go to YouTube and look up: Kevin Young “Aunties.” For all these reasons, I knew in advance I’d love this book, but I was completely unprepared for the first section: “Oblivion.”
These were not typical Kevin Young poems, and I’m not sure I’m equipped to describe them. Of course, I was missing the Kevin Young I knew, but he came back around to that. These poems were more mystical, magical, atmospheric, and simply beautiful. I felt invited and compelled to go back to the top and read again. They spread through me like music, carrying a mood more than meaning. They were in no way esoteric: I hate stuffy “you’re not smart enough to read this” poems. He was simply inviting us into his way of viewing the universe.
The first poem in the section, “Halter,” is more straight forward, beginning,
“Nothing can make, make me want
to stay
in this world –…”
Then the poems become more abstract, using Young’s gift for metaphor. From “Egrets,”
“Some say beauty
may be the egret
in the field
who follows after
the cows
sensing slaughter –”
Then he launches into what the soul is and is not, finally landing on
“…Instead, the horses
standing almost fifteen
hands high –
like regret they come
most the time
when called...
plum-dark tongues
flashing quick
& rough as a match –
striking your hand,
your arm, startled
into flame.” -
I liked absolutely nothing about this book
⭐️ -
A very beautifully written collection of poetry. Themes of loss and death. I was most taken by the scenes with the poet and his son, in the graveyard, amongst their dead. Really touching.
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Love the rhythms and subject matter. These work focus mostly on connecting with nature and surroundings.
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A beautiful book grappling mostly with death, the obligations to generations past, and a father‘s responsibilities to his son. Young is a master of the pithy twist of wisdom and at blending gravity with the passing vivid detail. I found the section “Rose Room” especially vivid and affecting, with its entanglement of the habits of drinking with familial burdens and rewards. By volume’s end though, the use of the same poetic structure in every poem and the refrain of the gravestone as trope become less rewarding than wearing.
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This collection is spare at times, meandering, and plays with the sound of language. Like the title suggests, these poems are stones, small, self contained, and just weighty enough. Some look similar to others, some are wildly different from the rest, but they're all poetic and of a theme. There are glimpses of youth, family, the present moment, but unfortunately the through line is just not strong.
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A deep rumination on life, death, family, nature, and ancestors from one of our most precise and on point poets, Kevin Young.
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the universal, connection to the familial and natural worlds, nicely done. for reminiscing, maybe i need more detail to understand better, or perhaps it's a "you had to be there" and simply couldn't appreciate certain elements on that level. i typically enjoy young's work, so this very well is likely a "me problem." solid collection overall.
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Poetry that I kind of get. Past, Present, Future lives in a family. The reoccurring theme is burial and grief and living on. The mood is reflective, acceptance. That is a single reading, but I suspect if I as a reader was at a different place in my life, I would see/feel these poems from a different view.
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Stones by Kevin Young
***
Beautiful work by Kevin Young. It reads to me like a book of poems that’s serving as an elegy to someone left the Earth far too early. The language is carefully chosen. I wish there had been a little more movement when it came to his stanzas, but overall, beautiful images and word play. -
"...the fog that finds/ my glasses// whenever I exit/ the car left/ idling like the dead// among tilted stones./ It is snow/ to see you// buried here - a frozen/ fallen light/ we lie down & try// making angels in." Kevin Young's translucent poetry is populated by the dead and animated by our longings. A very personal, soulful collection.
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Of the poetry books, this is one of them. The writing was a bit generic and otherwise forgettable as far as poetry goes, with the subject material not as engaging for me personally as I would have hoped. I did enjoy the lyrical wordplay, which was above average.
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everything was technically right with this collection (my kind of short sparse poem, wordplay, vivid and intimate locale, hard-hitting emotional content, still soft spoken) but it didn’t really resonate with me. missing something. probably on my end as a reader i just need a change of scene
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Spruce
Clearing
Oblivion
Vault
Mason Jar
"What we fear we find. Everything but time--"
"How like a termite I want to enter the house--"
"If you die tonight, do you know where you're going?"
"Like regret they come most of the time." -
It was good! I would give it 3 and a half but I can’t. I loved the depictions he gave of grief and family, but I thought it was repetitive at times. It might be because of the cyclical topic though so I wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading!!
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“Once the whole
doggone world was young—
once there were no words
for things
& people had to wait
among the green
& listen first,
making sure
the things themselves,
the very stones,
would tell you what
they wished to be named.”
Five stars. No notes. -
A brilliant book of poems sparse in execution but textured in lyricism and heart.
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Young does a fantastic job at weaving together themes of family, both past and present. I particularly enjoy his use of sound and rhyme schemes.
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A lot of this felt like mourning. Like going to my families funeral plot and seeing my great grandmothers headstone when she shares the same name as me. Unsettling
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Kevin Young is stellar. His poems invite you into a vision of life and memory and loss. Lyrically, he is nearly without peer.
