Books by Kevin Young

**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.

A literary landmark: Kevin Young presents the biggest and best anthology of black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the colonial period to the presentOnly now, in the 21st century, can we fully grasp the breadth and range of African American poetry: a magnificent chorus of many voices, some familiar, others recently rescued from neglect. And only here, in this unprecedented anthology expertly selected by poet and scholar Kevin Young, is this glorious living tradition wholly revealed in all its power, beauty, and multiplicity. Discover, in these pages, how an enslaved person like Phillis Wheatley confronted her legal status in verse and how an antebellum activist like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper voiced her own passionate resistance to slavery. Read nuanced, provocative poetic meditations on identity and self-assertion stretching from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Amiri Baraka to Lucille Clifton and beyond. Experience the transformation of poetic modernism in the works of figures such as Langston Hughes, Fenton Johnson, and Jean Toomer. Understand the threads of poetic history--in movements such as the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances, Black Arts, Cave Canem, Dark Noise Collective--and the complex bonds of solidarity and dialogue among poets across time and place. See how these poets have celebrated their African heritage and have connected with other communities in the African Diaspora. Enjoy the varied but distinctly Black music of a tradition that draws deeply from jazz, hip hop, and the rhythms and cadences of the pulpit, the barbershop, and the street. And appreciate, in the anthology''s concluding sections, why contemporary African American poetry, amply recognized in recent National Book Awards and Poet Laureates, is flourishing as never before. Taking the measure of the tradition in a single indispensable volume, African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song sets a new standard for a genuinely deep engagement with Black poetry and its essential expression of American genius.

Every day, you are confronted by people, situations, and obstacles that literally wear you down. You are bombarded by so many distractions that you have lost sight of what it means to be a Christian. The "busyness" of life has managed to superficially fill a void within you. Is it possible to regain understanding of how you should truly be living? Could simply altering your perception of the world bring you to a more mature state of understanding? Is it possible to release the hold that evil has on you? In Diary of a... Madman?, you will be introduced to a philosophical perspective of living. You will gain an understanding as to why life can be so tough. You will learn how your perceptions can be misguided. You will learn how to identify the barriers that are holding you back from making the most of your spiritual journey. You will be reminded of just how special we are as creations of God and can even break the grip that evil holds on us.

Description Riding the Edge is about the author's struggles through life in dealing with his bipolar disease coupled with attention deficit disorder. There is humor and sadness to the book but it is a life truly lived on the edge.About the AuthorKevin Young, born in 1963, has lived with bipolar disease all his life but was not diagnosed as such until 2009. How bipolar affected his life can be both sad and humorous. Learning to live with the disease without going over the edge is the hardest part.

What happened to the documents captured in the Alamo? Does a ghost actually haunt the state capitol in Austin? Was John Wilkes Booth killed or did he escape and flee to Central Texas? The authors present the known facts and circumstances of these and other mysteries.

Now in paperback, a haunting chorus of voices that tells the story of the captivity, education, language, hopes, dreams, and fight for freedom, of the African Americans abducted in the Amistad rebellion.Based on the 1840 mutiny on board the slave ship Amistad, Ardency begins with "Buzzard," a sequence of poems told in the voice of the interpreter for the captive rebels, who were jailed in New Haven. In "Correspondence," we encounter the remarkable letters to John Quincy Adams and others that the captives wrote from jail. The book culminates in "Witness," a libretto chanted by Cinque, the rebel leader, who yearns for his family and freedom while eloquently evoking the Amistads'' conversion and life in America. As Young conjures this array of characters, interweaving the liberation cry of Negro spirituals and the indoctrinating wordplay of American primers, he delivers his signature songlike immediacy at the service of an epic built on the ironies, violence, and virtues of American history.

Ever since its first flowering in the 1920s, jazz has had an influence on American poetry, and this anthology offers a collection of jazz poems. From the Harlem Renaissance to the Beat Movement, from the poets of the New York School to the contemporary poetry scene, the jazz aesthetic has been a literary force.