Stones

One of the most important poets of his generation... There appears to be no format in which Young does not shine.

Kevin Young perfectly illustrates poetry's enduring vitality.

Keeping up with him is like trying to keep up with Bob Dylan or Prince in their primes. Even the bootlegs have bootlegs.

One of the poetry stars of his generation.

Kevin Young is the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture and poetry editor of the New Yorker. He was previously the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He is the author of a number of books of poetry and prose, including Jelly Roll: A Blues, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry; Bunk, a New York Times Notable Book, longlisted for the National Book Award and named on many 'best of' lists for 2017; and The Grey Album, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the PEN Open Book Award, a New York Times Notable Book, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE T.S. ELIOT PRIZE 2021** 
 
A book of loss, looking back, and what binds us to life, by a towering poetic talent, 'one of the poetry stars of his generation' (Los Angeles Times). 
 
'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.

Kevin Young

Kevin Young is a poet of exceptional depth and sensitivity... Let yourself focus on every phrase

As Young writes, we live in a world in which ‘the dead won’t leave/us be.’ Thankfully, there remains collective work to honor them. Night Watch continues one of the most vital currents in contemporary poetry, transforming history and its silences into lyric through the poet’s eloquent invitation: ‘O wounded soul,/ speak.’

Impressionistic and potent... Young’s poems candidly and vividly trace the woven threads of loss and admiration, death and reemergence: ‘away from gravity/ & the cherry trees/ blooming early// before I was even ready / to believe again/ in beauty.’ This elegant volume deepens the body of work by a significant American poet

Young’s compact, clever, pithy verses can be read for their melody and the feelings they evoke, and they can also be parsed for clues to deep meaning

As with his other writing on historical figures, Young plumbs some of the most shameful parts of our nation’s history and society’s violences and holds them up to the light. . . . Yet, above all, Night Watch is a book defined by grief and the existential trembling before the precipice of mortality and how we bear witness to loss

Concentrated, intricately crafted, richly evocative, peppered with song lyrics and conversational turns of phrase, alive with birds, trees, rain, and snow, Young’s poems delve into the mysteries of body and soul, memory and death, life and love

The exquisite lyrical beauty of Night Watch depicts the slowly advancing night as counterpart and complement to the light of life and day, where the shadowy impositions of race, affliction, and the afterlife become the illumination we seek, the beautifully shimmering clarities of ‘this errant unebbing life.

A new poetry collection about loss, legacy and African American history, from the poetry editor of the New Yorker 
 
*Winner of the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize* 
*Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry 2025* 
 
'Keeping up with him is like trying to keep up with Bob Dylan or Prince in their primes' New York Times 
 
Kevin Young's new poetry collection, written over sixteen years, tells stories of community, nationhood and resistance, inspired in part by other lives. He starts in the bayous of Louisiana, and speaks from the voices of Millie and Christine McCoy, the conjoined African American 'Carolina Twins' - born into enslavement who later toured the world as free women. 
 
Young writes of grief and hope as familiar yet surprising states: 'It's like a language, / loss -', he writes, 'learnt only / by living - there - '. Evoking the history of poetry, Young's new collection is defiant and playful, elegant and devastating - his voice shaping sorrow with music, humour and wit. 
 
'One of the most important poets of his generation' Washington Post

Kevin Young

Praise for Night Watch

Kevin Young is a poet of exceptional depth and sensitivity... Let yourself focus on every phrase

As Young writes, we live in a world in which ‘the dead won’t leave/us be.’ Thankfully, there remains collective work to honor them. Night Watch continues one of the most vital currents in contempora ...

Impressionistic and potent... Young’s poems candidly and vividly trace the woven threads of loss and admiration, death and reemergence: ‘away from gravity/ & the cherry trees/ blooming early// before I was ev ...

Kevin Young is a poet of exceptional depth and sensitivity... Let yourself focus on every phrase

As Young writes, we live in a world in which ‘the dead won’t leave/us be.’ Thankfully, there remains collective work to honor them. Night Watch continues one of the most vital currents in contempora ...

Impressionistic and potent... Young’s poems candidly and vividly trace the woven threads of loss and admiration, death and reemergence: ‘away from gravity/ & the cherry trees/ blooming early// before I was ev ...

Kevin Young is a poet of exceptional depth and sensitivity... Let yourself focus on every phrase

As Young writes, we live in a world in which ‘the dead won’t leave/us be.’ Thankfully, there remains collective work to honor them. Night Watch continues one of the most vital currents in contempora ...

Impressionistic and potent... Young’s poems candidly and vividly trace the woven threads of loss and admiration, death and reemergence: ‘away from gravity/ & the cherry trees/ blooming early// before I was ev ...

Books by Kevin Young

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