Book of Hours: Poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780375711886)

A decade after the sudden and tragic loss of his father, we witness the unfolding of grief. "In the night I brush / my teeth with a razor," he tells us, in one of the collection's piercing two-line poems. Capturing the strange silence of bereavement ("Not the storm / but the calm / that slays me"), Kevin Young acknowledges, even celebrates, life's passages, his loss transformed and tempered in a sequence about the birth of his son: in "Crowning," he delivers what is surely one of the most powerful birth poems written by a man, describing "her face / full of fire, then groaning your face / out like a flower, blood-bloom, / crocused into air." Ending this book of both birth and grief, the gorgeous title sequence brings acceptance, asking "What good/are wishes if they aren't / used up?" while understanding "How to listen / to what's gone." Young's frank music speaks directly to the reader in these elemental poems, reminding us that the right words can both comfort us and enlarge our understanding of life's mysteries.

Author: Kevin Young
ISBN-10: 0375711880
ISBN-13: 9780375711886
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Language: English
Published: 10/13/2015
Pages: 208
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.60d