For the Confederate Dead

English

ISBN: 0307264351

EAN: 9780307264350

Category: Poetry / General

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Release Date: 01/01/2007

Synopsis: In this passionate new collection, Kevin Young takes up a range of African American griefs and passages. He opens with the beautiful Elegy for Miss Brooks, invoking Gwendolyn Brooks, who died in 2000, and who makes a perfect muse for the volume: What the devil / are we without you? he asks. I tuck your voice, laced / tight, in these brown shoes. In that spirit of intimate community, Young gives us a saucy ballad of Jim Crow, a poem about Lionel Hamptons last concert in Paris, an African Elegy, which addresses the tragic loss of a close friend in conjunction with the first anniversary of 9/11, and a series entitled Americana, in which we encounter a clutch of mythical southern towns, such as East Jesus (The South knows ruin & likes it / thatawaythe barns becoming / earth again, leaning in) and West Hell (Sin, thy name is this / waitthis place / a long ways from Here / to There). For the Confederate Deadfinds Young, more than ever before, in a poetic space that is at once public and personal. In the marvelous Guernica, Youngs account of a journey through Spain blends with the news of an American lynching, prompting him to ask, Precious South, / must I save you, / or myself? In this surprising book, the poet manages to do a bit of both, embracing the contradictions of our Confederate legacy and the troubled nation where that legacy still lingers.

Awards: Quill Awards – null 

Excerpt: Unknown Property Excerpt

For the Confederate Dead

Illustrated: No

Format: Hardcover

Height: 0.9 inches

Width: 6.15 inches

Length: 8.9 inches

Weight: 13.62 oz

Pages: 176