There's always been really interesting, diverse black voices talking and arguing and counterpointing. — 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
Certainly, there is, in our culture, this notion of, you know, you can become anything. You can change. — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
I didn't technically grow up in the South, but both my parents were from there. — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
I think that I try really hard to think about how we deceive ourselves, and we let ourselves be deceived. — 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 remember in the '80s, people would literally have arguments over the best guitarist. — Kevin Young 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
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
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
The hoax is the very absence of truth, which usually means art is absent, too - hoaxes regularly substitute claims of reality… — Kevin Young Art 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
The willed recovery of what's been lost - often forcibly, I suppose - is what keeps me going. It is this reason… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
For 'The Grey Album,' I'd been thinking about the good side of lying - lying as a kind of improvisatory act in… — Kevin Young Black culture 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
Harper Lee's novel 'To Kill a Mockingbird' became iconic almost immediately after appearing in 1960: best-seller status; the Pulitzer Prize the next… — Kevin Young Academy award 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
“Deep Song Belief is what buries us—that & the belief in belief— No longer do I trust liltlessness —leeward is the world's… — Kevin Young Belief Copy Share Image
I write about what hoaxers do, but I also want us to think about what believers do. Why do we want to… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
Poems evolve. I don't feel like I choose them; they just come to me. — Kevin Young Change Copy Share Image
A poem can provide testimony. A poem can provide solace. It can provide a connection. — Kevin Young Connection Copy Share Image
For the black author, and even the ex-slave narrator, creativity has often lain with the lie - forging an identity, 'making' one,… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
I think I go with the Duke Ellington view on music. He said, 'There's two kinds of music - there's good music,… — 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… — Kevin Young America Copy Share Image
We've learned quickly that the Web is far more pseudonymous than anonymous: online, our names have simply been changed to a number,… — Kevin Young Anonymous Copy Share Image
“I now know pain is part of any journey- that this is the opposite of grief, but grief the only way I… — Kevin Young Death 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
A DJ draws a connection between two seemingly disparate things and says, 'Look, they are alike. You can dance to them.' — Kevin Young Connection Copy Share Image
It took a while for anyone to want to publish 'To Repel Ghosts.' I thought people would want to publish a three-hundred-and-fifty-page… — Kevin Young Copy Share Image
Footnotes are for proving and showing where you've been. Also, they're for the curious - they can then go and find the… — 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… — Kevin Young Black culture 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
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
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
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
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
