I remember in the '80s, people would literally have arguments over the best guitarist. — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
There is, of course, no larger mass hysteria in American history than the epidemic of racism. — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
I try to read as a reader and also read as a writer. I mean, they're not so different. — Kevin Young Books Copy Share Image
I didn't technically grow up in the South, but both my parents were from there. — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
Certainly, there is, in our culture, this notion of, you know, you can become anything. You can change. — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
“Daylight Savings" Like the money the light doesn't go as far these days” — Kevin Young Daylight Copy Share Image
Poets often are dealing with history and are thinking about the way history moves across us, and we move in it. — Kevin Young History Copy Share Image
What a poem can do is provide you this intimate eye that, for the length of a poem and hopefully a little… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
I do think there's a certain savviness to be able to recognize the way people want a good story, and I think… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
The question of sort of music and history, I think, are so important to understanding the poem as an idea but also… — Kevin Young History Copy Share Image
For me Louisiana was mostly family when I was there. We hardly left; there was no need to... We hardly left the… — Kevin Young Family Copy Share Image
The mid-eighteen-thirties marked the rise of eugenics and racialism, with phrenology emerging as just one of the many pseudosciences that sought to… — Kevin Young Difference Copy Share Image
I try to have a lot of influences, which is to say not to have one specific influence too strongly; that can… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
Here are the facts: my folks grew up so poor that, in the words of Redd Foxx, there were twenty o's between… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
People sometimes say hoaxes are about the blurry line between nonfiction and fiction. I just don't think it's a blurry line at… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
Listen to the late Isaac Hayes covering 'Walk on By' by Burt Bacharach or Mayfield singing The Carpenters' vanilla-seeming 'We've Only Just… — Kevin Young Change Copy Share Image
We had moved cross-country from upstate New York to Kansas in the heat wave of 1980, with two cars, no air-conditioning, and… — Kevin Young Dog Copy Share Image
There's something about the kind of time travel that a poem can provide. It can take you to somewhere else - a… — Kevin Young Cinema Copy Share Image
Blackface remains exoticist and offensive as a practice, not just because of its long tradition of being used to mock black selfhood,… — Kevin Young Black people Copy Share Image
Music and the blues, they have taught me a lot. I think in this book, 'Book Of Hours,' there is this blues… — Kevin Young Blues Copy Share Image
While claiming advocacy, what hoaxers really exhibit is self-interest. Often, this is because there is only the self to support their false… — Kevin Young Advocacy Copy Share Image
“what you must understand is that the herald & the horror are the same.” — Kevin Young Horror Copy Share Image
There's always been really interesting, diverse black voices talking and arguing and counterpointing. — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
Rereading 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' I was struck by what I had forgotten of the book: in a manner of pages, we… — Kevin Young Book Copy Share Image
At our peril, we ignore the fact that black vernacular, like the blues, both has a form and performs... For just as… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
In African-American culture, there's often a family historian, someone who does the genealogy or keeps the family Bible. I became aware that… — Kevin Young American culture Copy Share Image
In the absence of an answer that is complicated and sort of maybe troubling, we sometimes settle for the easy answer. It's… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
I think Barnum is at the center of American culture. He's helping to invent what we now think of as pop culture.… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
To me, poetry is spoken - not exclusively, but there's a mix of languages in it. That's what I liked about 'For… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
In a long poem or a sequence of poems, you're trying to formalize your obsessions and give them a shape and a… — Kevin Young Connections Copy Share Image
“Letters I've never sent. This life we're only renting. Battered the world is - bartered - wander over it the stars finding… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
We quickly erase hoaxes once exposed, excising the monstrous palimpsest, because as with any witch hunt or obvious fake, afterward we can't… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
That sense of mystery, but also of revelation, is what I turn to poems for. They're able to embody experience. We need… — Kevin Young Experience Copy Share Image
In many ways, I feel like the form carries so much of the weight in a poem, obviously. But I think we… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
“Like hot food I love you like warm bread & cold cuts, butter sammiches or, days later, after Thanksgiving when I want… — Kevin Young Food Copy Share Image
I think music is poetry in the sense that I think the condition of poetry I'm going for has some qualities of… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
Writers need their totems, their altars. Mine, I feel, share the same randomness and utility of those belonging to painters I know,… — Kevin Young Belonging Copy Share Image
One of the most troubling things about the term 'fake news' is that it has become a force field against accusations you… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
