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For the Confederate Dead
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 “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 Hampton's 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 / thataway—the barns becoming / earth again, leaning in—”) and West Hell (“Sin, thy name is this / wait—this place— / a long ways from Here / to There”).
For the Confederate Dead finds Young, more than ever before, in a poetic space that is at once public and personal. In the marvelous “Guernica,” Young’s 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.
For the Confederate Dead finds Young, more than ever before, in a poetic space that is at once public and personal. In the marvelous “Guernica,” Young’s 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.
- GenresPoetryAfrican American
176 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
1 person is currently reading
128 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Young
87 books373 followersKevin 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 30, 2020
Moving collection of poems by superb American poet and writer Young. Many of the poems address the nation’s continuing “contradictions of our ‘Confederate’ legacy and the troubled [national landscape] where that legacy still lingers.” Published in 2007, these poems were powerful and poignant reading (I read this book twice) in 2020, the year of Black lives Matter, COVID-19, a divided election and so much more.
June 5, 2017
The Nicodemus sections and the “Elegy for Miss Brooks" particularly shine in this collection by Kevin Young. Young's versatility and his ability to adjust style to subject matter is quite impressive and on display often alternating line length in relations to the content with more brutal poems taking shorter, more clipped lines. This is also highly elegiac, but Young maintains your interest. Good work.
August 7, 2018
excellent, moving
October 30, 2016
One of the best books of poetry I've read in quite some time. My new favorite poet.
Mr. Young edited a collection of poems I quite liked and then in an unrelated search I turned up this book of poems by him. I admit that I got it based on the title.
Once I started reading it, however, it was clear that not only is Mr. Young a good judge of other poems, he's very good at writing his own...
I'm still working on my ability to review poetry, but I think the key reason why I liked this set of poems is because the imagery is so simple but it does the job. For instance, take this poem, "Banesborough" from a section entitled "Americana":
The Werewolf family moved
next door without a word
or wave. The situation, hairy,
scared me--once a month
the men bloating, became
unhinged. Wired
as their cars for sound, Howling
Wolf on the stereo, wailing
they rode around. From my window
you can see the women at
a loss, pacing between
cracks in the blinds--
under moonlight they fret
for where their sons,
husbands be at
come payday--downtown,
woofing, drinking for weeks
of work away, their beards
grown in beyond regulation, hair wild
as their lawns tall as The Plant--
poisonous flytrap--that keeps threatening
to shut on down.
In that same section, there's a poem called signs that artistically places together roadside signs, such as "He Who Takes the Son/Gets It All" followed by "Young's Pawn/& Gun". This is exactly the kind of modern(?) poetry that works so very well for me throughout this collection.
Most of the poems are part of a themed section, such as the above-named Americana, The Ballad of Jim Crow, and African Elegy, a set of poems about a friend who passed away and dealing with the loss. Each section has its own feel, appropriate to the material.
There's a big difference between the opening of "Nativity" from Jim Crow:
Known by four score
& seven names, Jim Crow
was born
with a silver bullet
in his hand. Some say
on a gambling boat,
others say he met the world
at home, in a shotgun
shack. For certain
his left hand clutched
a tin nickel
swallowed by his mother
so the taxman
couldn't touch it.
That boy was all
she had
to the opening of "The News [Stop That Train]" from the African Elegy section:
When you died I was reading Whitman
aloud.
While you died I was miles away,
thousands of deserts and oceans
and mountains and plain.
One is guttural, short, and ready to discuss the ugliness of the subject being used as an allegory. The other is soft, gentle, and rolling, full of introspection and discussion of a subject sure to be hard for the writer to express. Rather than try to shoehorn his style into the poetic story he wishes to tell, Mr. Young adjusts his style to fit the story. This might be part of why he was so good at editing that poetry anthology--since his style can change as needed, he was able to read a wide variety of style and include them in his editorial work. I'm not saying he has no style, I guess what I'm going for is that the style he uses is not as rigid as some other poets I've read over the years, and that, to me, is why he's so good. He can quote Whitman and write descriptive poems yet also use fragments to tell his story, something Whitman would never try. (I feel myself falling into a trap of lack of reviewer ability here, so I think I'll stop before I dig a deeper hole for myself.)
This ability to adapt is, to me, is what makes Mr. Young a great poet, and I hope for a long and prosperous career for him. I'm glad to have gotten to know his work early on, and I hope you will, too. (Library, 06/07)
Mr. Young edited a collection of poems I quite liked and then in an unrelated search I turned up this book of poems by him. I admit that I got it based on the title.
Once I started reading it, however, it was clear that not only is Mr. Young a good judge of other poems, he's very good at writing his own...
I'm still working on my ability to review poetry, but I think the key reason why I liked this set of poems is because the imagery is so simple but it does the job. For instance, take this poem, "Banesborough" from a section entitled "Americana":
The Werewolf family moved
next door without a word
or wave. The situation, hairy,
scared me--once a month
the men bloating, became
unhinged. Wired
as their cars for sound, Howling
Wolf on the stereo, wailing
they rode around. From my window
you can see the women at
a loss, pacing between
cracks in the blinds--
under moonlight they fret
for where their sons,
husbands be at
come payday--downtown,
woofing, drinking for weeks
of work away, their beards
grown in beyond regulation, hair wild
as their lawns tall as The Plant--
poisonous flytrap--that keeps threatening
to shut on down.
In that same section, there's a poem called signs that artistically places together roadside signs, such as "He Who Takes the Son/Gets It All" followed by "Young's Pawn/& Gun". This is exactly the kind of modern(?) poetry that works so very well for me throughout this collection.
Most of the poems are part of a themed section, such as the above-named Americana, The Ballad of Jim Crow, and African Elegy, a set of poems about a friend who passed away and dealing with the loss. Each section has its own feel, appropriate to the material.
There's a big difference between the opening of "Nativity" from Jim Crow:
Known by four score
& seven names, Jim Crow
was born
with a silver bullet
in his hand. Some say
on a gambling boat,
others say he met the world
at home, in a shotgun
shack. For certain
his left hand clutched
a tin nickel
swallowed by his mother
so the taxman
couldn't touch it.
That boy was all
she had
to the opening of "The News [Stop That Train]" from the African Elegy section:
When you died I was reading Whitman
aloud.
While you died I was miles away,
thousands of deserts and oceans
and mountains and plain.
One is guttural, short, and ready to discuss the ugliness of the subject being used as an allegory. The other is soft, gentle, and rolling, full of introspection and discussion of a subject sure to be hard for the writer to express. Rather than try to shoehorn his style into the poetic story he wishes to tell, Mr. Young adjusts his style to fit the story. This might be part of why he was so good at editing that poetry anthology--since his style can change as needed, he was able to read a wide variety of style and include them in his editorial work. I'm not saying he has no style, I guess what I'm going for is that the style he uses is not as rigid as some other poets I've read over the years, and that, to me, is why he's so good. He can quote Whitman and write descriptive poems yet also use fragments to tell his story, something Whitman would never try. (I feel myself falling into a trap of lack of reviewer ability here, so I think I'll stop before I dig a deeper hole for myself.)
This ability to adapt is, to me, is what makes Mr. Young a great poet, and I hope for a long and prosperous career for him. I'm glad to have gotten to know his work early on, and I hope you will, too. (Library, 06/07)
February 13, 2009
As with all poetry books, (save Billy Collins ) this was hit-or-miss.
I loved Young's similie. That was a high-point for me. I thought Nicodemus was stellar as was The Ballad of Jim Crow. I think my favorite line though comes from West Hell, "How humid the heart, its messy rooms! We eat spicy food, sweat like wood and smolder like the coal mine that caught fire decades ago, yet still smokes more than my great-uncle who will not quit- or go out-"
I loved Young's similie. That was a high-point for me. I thought Nicodemus was stellar as was The Ballad of Jim Crow. I think my favorite line though comes from West Hell, "How humid the heart, its messy rooms! We eat spicy food, sweat like wood and smolder like the coal mine that caught fire decades ago, yet still smokes more than my great-uncle who will not quit- or go out-"
January 12, 2024
I like approaching this book as a parallel to Robert Lowell’s For the Union Dead. And to think about the juxtaposition of Lowell, a White man writing in Boston about a poetic perspective that would have been informed by family background and their participation in the mythos of New England to Young, a Black man writing in the South and of the South. For me, it establishes a direct address of race. Both the invisibility of Whiteness for Lowell and the the inescapable burden of history bearing down on that racial perspective for Young. His documentary approach, then, carries a political angle. Especially in the opening two-thirds of the book.
However, it’s a challenge for me to follow poems that act as a brief lyric record, giving account of a person or a scene or a place. I appreciate Young’s preference for describing the specifics rather than meditating on generalities. However, those specifics are often commentary on the general. There is something constrained and purposeful in that gesture. Like I read this kind of poem, and I feel like it’s dotting i’s and crossing t’s. As Young tells a fabled history of Jim Crow. Or the story of a Black family moving to Kansas. Juxtaposing these stories to “Booker T. Abroad,” I recognize Young building a set of dimensions to his purpose. History has not been in the habit of telling these stories. Writing poems about the stories carries a kind of authority that makes them sound like they had been told all along. It’s just people responsible for the historic record weren’t listening. It represents a Poetics of Authority that cuts two ways: (1) these stories always existed and it’s through Young’s work that they come to a broader awareness and (2) history voices itself in this authoritative tone, so these stories will adopt that tone, so their historic position will be acknowledged.
I am interested in this purpose, but I find relying on poetry for documentation of a place can result in a poem that is too sure of itself. Where the lyric can be made to accommodate a poetic occasion. In Young’s book, it’s “Borrowed Country” versus “Americana.” In “Borrowed Country,” the poem is occasioned by this series of poems meant to contribute material to American folk lore. Specifically, the poem imprints a story on a nondescript house. It imbues the house with meaning. I would argue it sets too easy a target for itself. The discovery of wonder among an everyday location most people pass without much thought might elaborate on real people’s lives and their concerns. But that’s where the imaginative energy lands. Not like with “Americana,” where the poem keeps landing, but then wanting to say more. Like it’s fully satisfied when it lands an address to “America.” I know this is the kind of poem I’m more inclined to anyway.
However, it’s a challenge for me to follow poems that act as a brief lyric record, giving account of a person or a scene or a place. I appreciate Young’s preference for describing the specifics rather than meditating on generalities. However, those specifics are often commentary on the general. There is something constrained and purposeful in that gesture. Like I read this kind of poem, and I feel like it’s dotting i’s and crossing t’s. As Young tells a fabled history of Jim Crow. Or the story of a Black family moving to Kansas. Juxtaposing these stories to “Booker T. Abroad,” I recognize Young building a set of dimensions to his purpose. History has not been in the habit of telling these stories. Writing poems about the stories carries a kind of authority that makes them sound like they had been told all along. It’s just people responsible for the historic record weren’t listening. It represents a Poetics of Authority that cuts two ways: (1) these stories always existed and it’s through Young’s work that they come to a broader awareness and (2) history voices itself in this authoritative tone, so these stories will adopt that tone, so their historic position will be acknowledged.
I am interested in this purpose, but I find relying on poetry for documentation of a place can result in a poem that is too sure of itself. Where the lyric can be made to accommodate a poetic occasion. In Young’s book, it’s “Borrowed Country” versus “Americana.” In “Borrowed Country,” the poem is occasioned by this series of poems meant to contribute material to American folk lore. Specifically, the poem imprints a story on a nondescript house. It imbues the house with meaning. I would argue it sets too easy a target for itself. The discovery of wonder among an everyday location most people pass without much thought might elaborate on real people’s lives and their concerns. But that’s where the imaginative energy lands. Not like with “Americana,” where the poem keeps landing, but then wanting to say more. Like it’s fully satisfied when it lands an address to “America.” I know this is the kind of poem I’m more inclined to anyway.
March 3, 2022
Another great collection poems, most struck by the elegies to Gwendolyn Brooks and “African Elegy”, a suite of poems composed for a friend lost too soon. There is a musicality to Young you feel, before the words then finish you off.
“There’s nothing left
to say. You have done
your dance, away—
to the place we never thought
would gather you
though somewhere we knew
how days grow shorn. Unbrittle,
brave, graceful yet laceless,
you struck the stone till you were
the stone, or the face”
— excerpt from “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
though somewhere we knew
how days grow shorn. Unbrittle,
brave, graceful yet laceless,
you struck the stone till you were
the stone, or the face”
— excerpt from “Elegy for Miss Brooks”
September 19, 2017
I quite enjoyed this book. I started it to read in parallel with The Autobiography of Malcolm X and it was very interesting to read these poems through that lens. My favorite poem was probably the one about Lionel Hampton's last concert
July 28, 2025
Some powerful moments, but felt inconsistent
Read
March 20, 2009Such beautiful writing, each poem like a ripened springtime bulb or a dark, swollen fruit. The poems from the latter half of the book are among some of its best. After reading this, now when I write poetry of my own I feel that I can't go without some internal rhyme. It's contagious.
December 15, 2009
Kevin Young always impresses me with how smart his poetry is. This collection features some really nice historical topics, presented with beautiful poems. The next to last section about his fallen friend is the best.
August 10, 2007
First book of poetry that I've bought for pleasure reading in a loooong time. The section "Americana" is my favorite, esp. the title poem and another called, "Signs."
March 27, 2011
All kinds of folklore, history, elegy, precision, elision, satire, music and song wrapped up tight and sprawling in this beautiful collection.
July 31, 2014
I Read this after Book Of Hours. Hard to hold anything to Book of Hours.
February 24, 2015
The elegies for his friend were particularly moving and impressive.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews