Kevin Young

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction “There Kevin Young goes again, giving us books we greatly need, cleverly disguised as books we merely want. Unexpectedly essential.”—Marlon James Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young tours us through a rogue’s gallery of hoaxers, plagiarists, forgers, and fakers—from the humbug of P. T. Barnum and Edgar Allan Poe to the unrepentant bunk of JT LeRoy and Donald J. Trump. Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington, and What Is It?, an African American man Barnum professed was a newly discovered missing link in evolution. Bunk then turns to the hoaxing of history and the ways that forgers, plagiarists, and journalistic fakers invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from pretend Native Americans Grey Owl and Nasdijj to the deadly imposture of Clark Rockefeller, from the made-up memoirs of James Frey to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal. In this brilliant and timely work, Young asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of “truthiness” where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a pervasive cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art.

The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News

Bunk

A book that includes contributions from such poets as Dylan Thomas, John Ashbery, Emily Dickinson, Rita Dove, Anne Sexton, Robert Pinsky and many more collects 150 contemporary elegies that embrace the pain, heartbreak and healing stages of mourning.

Poems of Grief and Healing

The Art of Losing

Presents a collection of poems with themes of bereavement and celebration, as the author deals with the unexpected death of his father and the birth of his daughter.

Book of Hours

A literary landmark: the biggest, most ambitious anthology of black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the colonial period to the present Only now, in the 21st century, can we fully grasp the breadth and range of African American poetry: a magnificent chorus of voices, some familiar, others recently rescued from neglect. Here, in this unprecedented anthology expertly selected by poet and scholar Kevin Young, this precious living heritage is 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.

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (Loa #333)

James Brown. John Brown's raid. Brown v. the Topeka Board of Ed. The prizewinning author of Blue Laws meditates on all things "brown" in this powerful new collection. “Vital and sophisticated ... sinks hooks into you that cannot be easily removed.” —The New York Times Divided into "Home Recordings" and "Field Recordings," Brown speaks to the way personal experience is shaped by culture, while culture is forever affected by the personal, recalling a black Kansas boyhood to comment on our times. From "History"—a song of Kansas high-school fixture Mr. W., who gave his students "the Sixties / minus Malcolm X, or Watts, / barely a march on Washington"—to "Money Road," a sobering pilgrimage to the site of Emmett Till's lynching, the poems engage place and the past and their intertwined power. These thirty-two taut poems and poetic sequences, including an oratorio based on Mississippi "barkeep, activist, waiter" Booker Wright that was performed at Carnegie Hall and the vibrant sonnet cycle "De La Soul Is Dead," about the days when hip-hop was growing up ("we were black then, not yet / African American"), remind us that blackness and brownness tell an ongoing story. A testament to Young's own—and our collective—experience, Brown offers beautiful, sustained harmonies from a poet whose wisdom deepens with time.

Poems

Brown

Divided into "Home Recordings" and "Field Recordings," Brown speaks to the way personal experience is shaped by culture, while culture is forever affected by the personal, recalling a black, Kansas boyhood to comment on our times. From "History"--A song of Kansas high-school fixture Mr. W., who gave his students "the Sixties / minus Malcolm X, or Watts, / barely a march on Washington"--to "Money Road," a sobering pilgrimage to the site of Emmett Till's lynching, the poems engage place and the past and their intertwined power. These twenty-eight taut poems and poetic sequences, including an oratorio based on Mississippi "barkeep, activist, waiter" Booker Wright that was performed at Carnegie Hall and the vibrant sonnet cycle "De La Soul Is Dead," about the days when hip-hop was growing up ("we were black then, not yet / African American"), remind us that blackness and brownness tell an ongoing story. A testament to Young's own--and our collective--experience, Brown offers beautiful, sustained harmonies from a poet whose wisdom deepens with time"--

poems

*Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism* *A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Literary Criticism and Essays Pick for Spring 2012* The Grey Album, the first work of prose by the brilliant poet Kevin Young, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize Taking its title from Danger Mouse's pioneering mashup of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album, Kevin Young's encyclopedic book combines essay, cultural criticism, and lyrical choruses to illustrate the African American tradition of lying--storytelling, telling tales, fibbing, improvising, "jazzing." What emerges is a persuasive argument for the many ways that African American culture is American culture, and for the centrality of art--and artfulness--to our daily life. Moving from gospel to soul, funk to freestyle, Young sifts through the shadows, the bootleg, the remix, the grey areas of our history, literature, and music.

On the Blackness of Blackness

The Grey Album

In a playful, lyrical collection of poetry inspired by the rhythms of the blues, the poet blends traditional lyric diction with African-American idiom to create such lighthearted verses as "Stride Piano," "Gutbucket," and "Can-Can." Reprint.

Jelly Roll

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. 

Stones: Poems

A sixth compilation of poetry by the acclaimed author of Jelly Roll and For the Confederate Dead pays homage to members of his extended family, celebrates food and its meaning in life, deals with the grief over the death of his father, and counts his losses and blessings, all with a touch of the blues.

Dear Darkness

Art of Losing

The blues--a musical tradition uniquely American--has had a powerful influence on American poets, and this scintillating anthology offers a richness of poetry as varied and vital as the music that inspired it.

Blues Poems

A book of loss, looking back, and what binds us to life, by a towering poetic talent, called "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.

Stones

A collection of poetry celebrating the role of food and drink in everyday life, identity, and culture includes pieces by such writers as Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, and Allen Ginsberg.

Poems of Food and Drink

The Hungry Ear

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. For correspondence, please contact madmanzdiary@gmail.com.

One (Mad)mans Philosophical Perspective on Life

Diary of a...Madman?

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23 Tips to Re-Assemble Your Life and Disappear Living Off the Grid

Off Grid Living

Chiaki Okada

This volume is part of the early systematic inquiry into the analysis of sport as a developmental device. The book features an international roster of global experts. The chapters represent three groups: theory and philosophy, empirical research in 'on-the-ground' case studies, and those using circumspection to construct cases regarding evaluation.

Sport, Social Development and Peace

Blue Laws gathers poems written over the past two decades, drawing from all nine of Kevin Young's previously published books of poetry and including a number of uncollected, often unpublished, poems.

selected & uncollected poems, 1995-2015

Blue laws

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.

Diary of A...Madman?

Ever since its first flowering in the 1920s, jazz has had a powerful influence on American poetry, and this scintillating anthology offers a treasury of poems as varied and vital as the music that inspired them. 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 compelling literary force--one that Jazz Poems makes palpable. We hear it in the poems of Langston Hughes, e.e. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, Frank O'Hara, and Gwendolyn Brooks, and in those of Yusef Komunyakaa, Charles Simic, Rita Dove, Ntozake Shange, Mark Doty, and C.D. Wright. Here are poems that pay tribute to jazz's great voices, and poems that throb with the vivid rhythm and energy of the jazz tradition, ranging in tone from mournful elegy to sheer celebration.

Kevin Young

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