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 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 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 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 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 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
A poem can provide testimony. A poem can provide solace. It can provide a connection. — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
I think poems return us to that place of mud and dirt and earth, sun and rain. — Kevin Young 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
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
The question of sort of music and history, I think, are so important to understanding the poem as an idea but also… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
I'm not a historian. I know historians. I've worked with them. They have a really powerful way of looking at the world,… — Kevin Young 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
There's always been really interesting, diverse black voices talking and arguing and counterpointing. — 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. He invented… — 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 that we… — 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 the p… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
Even Toni Morrison claiming Bill Clinton as 'black' could not prepare us for the election of America's first undeniably black president, Barack Obama. — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
A DJ draws a connection between two seemingly disparate things and says, 'Look, they are alike. You can dance to them.' — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
Forget reparations - we need to rescue aspects of black culture abandoned even by black folks, whether it is the blues or home cookin'… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
I remember in the '80s, people would literally have arguments over the best guitarist. — 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 might be… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
“Deep Song Belief is what buries us—that & the belief in belief— No longer do I trust liltlessness —leeward is the world's way—Go on… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
