Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1995-2015

by Kevin Young

Longlisted for the National Book Award

A rich and lively gathering of highlights from the first twenty years of an extraordinary career, interspersed with "B sides" and "bonus tracks" from this prolific and widely acclaimed poet.

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from all nine of Kevin Young's previously published books of poetry and including a number of uncollected, often unpublished, poems. From his stunning lyric debut (Most Way Home, 1995) and the amazing "double album" life of Jean-Michel Basquiat (2001, "remixed" for Knopf in 2005), through his brokenhearted Jelly Roll: A Blues (2003) and his recent forays into adult grief and the joys of birth in Dear Darkness (2008) and Book of Hours (2014), this collection provides a grand tour of a poet whose personal poems and political poems are equally riveting. Together with wonderful outtakes and previously unseen blues, the profoundly felt poems here of family, Southern food, and loss are of a piece with the depth of personal sensibility and humanity found in his Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels or bold sequences such as "The Ballad of Jim Crow" and a new "Homage to Phillis Wheatley."

Genres: Poetry, Race, Contemporary

608 pages, Hardcover

First published February 2, 2016

About the author

Kevin Young is an American poet heavily influenced by the poet Langston Hughes and the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Young graduated from Harvard College in 1992, was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (1992-1994), and received his MFA from Brown University. While in Boston and Providence, he was part of the African-American poetry group, The Dark Room Collective.

Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Young is the author of Most Way Home, To Repel Ghosts, Jelly Roll, Black Maria, For The Confederate Dead, Dear Darkness, and editor of Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers; Blues Poems; Jazz Poems and John Berryman's Selected Poems.

His Black Cat Blues, originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, was included in The Best American Poetry 2005. Young's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines. In 2007, he served as guest editor for an issue of Ploughshares. He has written on art and artists for museums in Los Angeles and Minneapolis.

His 2003 book of poems Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award.

After stints at the University of Georgia and Indiana University, Young now teaches writing at Emory University, where he is the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing, as well as the curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, a large collection of first and rare editions of poetry in English.

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because it was longlisted for the National Book Award for poetry in 2016, although it did not make the short list. It is a mighty tome of poetry, which is difficult for how I like to read it. I am just not sure what I think about collected poems being grouped with slim volumes of current poems; the two are hard to compare. So I started at the end and worked backward for a while (since the poems are organized chronologically by collection in this volume) and then went to the beginning and read to the middle.

Young's poems vary widely in theme and style. Some collections are historical, embodying the voices of African slaves or earlier African Americans and their place in history. Some collections are clearly a reaction to grief or love. One entire collection seemed almost entirely composed of odes to different foods! It is almost as if the poet could hand someone this book and say, "Here, this is my life."

Poems I particularly liked:

Ragtime
"Like hot food
I love you

like warm
bread & cold

cuts, butter
sammiches

or, days later, after
Thanksgiving

when I want
whatever's left"

Elegy, Niagara Falls
"...I know
they are somewhere -

near - like you - all
gravity & fresh water
& grace rushing through-"

Duet
"Let us begin
by being free.

Then, to know just
what we need -

Night without
a light

The dark
full of dream.

And you & I, I
& you, & all

the letters in between."

Elegy for Miss Brooks
"There's nothing left
to say. You have done
your dance, away -
to the place we never thought
would gather you...."

Americana
"America, you won't obey.
You won't hunt
or heel or stay...."

"America I have seen
men whose faces are flags
bloodied and blue with talk

seen the churches keep
like crosses burning

seen the lady who lines
your huddled shore, her hand
rifle-raised,
her back turned away."

There is a Light That Never Goes Out
Composed entirely from different song lyrics - read it online

[Daniel Klawitter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life is a near
death experience.

-Kevin Young.


This is a significant and substantial collection of poems with sharp word wit and engaging lyrical rhythms. The most enjoyable section for me were the selected poems from Dear Darkness, which have some of the best odes to food one is likely to find in contemporary poetry.

[Friedrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm very excited about this collection of the poetry of Kevin Young. I read a good deal of poetry, and I have rated or reviewed several poetry collections here on Goodreads, but I have rarely read a collection of poetry that has affected me so strongly from my very first dive in. As books of poetry go, this one is huge. At nearly 600 pages, it is close to being the largest in my collection, but its poems carry you away, and you will find yourself continuing to read the next and the next, as if it were an engrossing novel. I'm not qualified to draw comparisons to the modern poetical canon, but with Kevin Young's poetry, I would.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of this country's genuinely essential poets. I'm forever thankful to have discovered the poetry of Kevin Young back in 2007, and since then have made it my business to read everything by him I could get my eyes on. From murder noir, to deepest blues, to the voices of the Amistad rebellion, to Nerudan odes, to Basquiat and Jelly Roll Morton, Kevin Young's verse is a celebration of a human voice that is both deeply private and ecstatic simultaneously. This collection sits happily on my shelf between Pablo Neruda's odes and the collected work of Lucille Clifton.

[Jim O'Loughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is some great work in here, particularly the region-based poems and the odes to food. There are also interesting excerpts from book-length collections on Jack Johnson and the Amistad incident.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh this guy!

[Coates · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, mainly because of comparison. This collection is more of Young's early works, which are good, but I really liked his more recent ones (Brown and Stones). The wordplay and structure/spacing of the later works is just a little more polished. I did like some of the historical series that focused on Jack Johnson, Phyllis Wheatley, and the Amistad. And Book of Hours is a nice bridge from his older work to the newer.

[Liz V · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection which brings me back to when I first knew him at UGA; his voice is crisp and distinct, cutting to the core of things AND spending time ruminating along the way, simultaneously. What makes him unique.

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kevin Young is a genius with words. He captures the present and the past, people he has loved, and people he has never known.....all with an economy of words and artistic skill. This is a book I will return to. So glad I found the voice of this poet at a time when I needed to hear what he has to say.

[Simeon Berry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Micro-blurb: encrypted meditations on a moral treble clef as intricate as a Borgesian vow.