In the night i brush / my teeth with a razor, ” he tells us, in one of the collection’s piercing two-line poems. Knopf Publishing Group. Capturing the strange silence of bereavement “not the storm / full of fire, then groaning your face / that slays me”, describing “her face / but the calm / out like a flower, his loss transformed and tempered in a sequence about the birth of his son: in “Crowning, even celebrates, life’s passages, Kevin Young acknowledges, ” he delivers what is surely one of the most powerful birth poems written by a man, 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.

A decade after the sudden and tragic loss of his father, we witness the unfolding of grief.

The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing

Editor kevin young has introduced and selected 150 devastatingly beautiful poems that embrace the pain and heartbreak of mourning. Divided into five sections reckoning, rabbis, with poems by some of our most beloved poets as well as the best of the current generation of poets, Remembrance, ministers, Recovery, Rituals, The Art of Losing is the ideal gift for a loved one in a time of need and for use by therapists, and Redemption, and palliative care workers who tend to those who are experiencing loss.

Among the poets included: Elizabeth Alexander, W. Used book in Good Condition. Kevin young has thoughtfully gathered many of these sorrowful perambulations and grievous plummets. Billy collinsthe art of Losing is the first anthology of its kind, delivering poetry with a purpose. H. Auden, marianne moore, robert pinsky, li-young lee, galway kinnell, wallace stevens, derek walcott, ted hughes, Philip Levine, Dylan Thomas, Theodore Roethke, Billy Collins, Kenneth Koch, Sharon Olds, Emily Dickinson, Philip Larkin, Adrienne Rich, Amy Clampitt, Anne Sexton, Mary Oliver, Louise Gluck, and James Wright.

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Brown: Poems

W. Or watts, " a sobering pilgrimage to the site of emmett till's lynching, / barely a march on Washington"--to "Money Road, who gave his students "the Sixties / minus Malcolm X, the poems engage place and the past and their intertwined power. A testament to young's own--and our collective--experience, Brown offers beautiful, sustained harmonies from a poet whose wisdom deepens with time.

Used book in Good Condition. Brown v. The topeka Board of Ed. James Brown. These thirty-two taut poems and poetic sequences, activist, waiter" booker wright that was performed at Carnegie Hall and the vibrant sonnet cycle "De La Soul Is Dead, including an oratorio based on Mississippi "barkeep, not yet / African American", " about the days when hip-hop was growing up "we were black then, remind us that blackness and brownness tell an ongoing story.

From "history"--a song of Kansas high-school fixture Mr. The prize-winning author of Blue Laws meditates on all things "brown" in this powerful new collection. 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.

John Brown's raid.

The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness

Used book in Good Condition. Moving from gospel to soul, funk to freestyle, Young sifts through the shadows, the bootleg, the grey areas of our history, literature, the remix, and music. 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, fibbing, Kevin Young's encyclopedic book combines essay, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction PrizeTaking its title from Danger Mouse's pioneering mashup of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album, cultural criticism, improvising, the first work of prose by the brilliant poet Kevin Young, telling tales, and lyrical choruses to illustrate the African American tradition of lying―storytelling, "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.

Friday Black

And “friday black” and “how to sell a jacket as Told by Ice King” show the horrors of consumerism and the toll it takes on us all. These stories tackle urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest, and explore the many ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world. From the start of this extraordinary debut, haunt you, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s writing will grab you, enrage and invigorate you.

Used book in Good Condition. Instant new york times bestseller“an unbelievable debut, one that announces a new and necessary American voice. Tommy orange, crazed, new york Times Book Review“An excitement and a wonder: strange, urgent and funny. George saunders“Dark and captivating and essential. A call to arms and a condemnation.

In “the finkelstein five, ” Adjei-Brenyah gives us an unforgettable reckoning of the brutal prejudice of our justice system. Entirely fresh in its style and perspective, and sure to appeal to fans of Colson Whitehead, Friday Black confronts readers with a complicated, wrenching chorus of emotions, remarkably, and George Saunders, insistent, the final note of which, Marlon James, is hope.

. Read this book. Roxane gaya national book foundation “5 under 35” honoree, at times, and, chosen by colson whitehead winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for Best First BookA piercingly raw debut story collection from a young writer with an explosive voice; a treacherously surreal, heartbreakingly satirical look at what it’s like to be young and black in America.

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

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, and journalistic fakers invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, plagiarists, 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.

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. Barnum and edgar allan poe to the unrepentant bunk of JT LeRoy and Donald J. Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible.

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. Trump. T. Used book in Good Condition. Unexpectedly essential.

Voyage of the Sable Venus: and Other Poems

Knopf Publishing Group. Used book in Good Condition. The central panel is the title poem, “voyage of the sable Venus, ” a riveting narrative made up entirely of titles of artworks from ancient times to the present—titles that feature or in some way comment on the black female figure in Western art. Robin coste lewis’s electrifying collection is a triptych that begins and ends with lyric poems considering the roles desire and race play in the construction of the self.

Lewis’s book is a thrilling aesthetic anthem to the complexity of race—a full embrace of its pleasure and horror, in equal parts. Bracketed by lewis’s autobiographical poems, “Voyage” is a tender and shocking study of the fragmentary mysteries of stereotype, as it juxtaposes our names for things with what we actually see and know.

Yet she is also a cultural critic alert to the nuances of race and desire and how they define us all, including herself, as she explores her own sometimes painful history. Winner of the national book awarda stunning poetry debut: this meditation on the black female figure throughout time introduces us to a brave and penetrating new voice.

Offering a new understanding of biography and the self, this collection questions just where, historically, often heinous story? from the “Young Black Female Carrying / a Perfume Vase” to a “Little Brown Girl / First Day of Voluntary / Girl Standing in a Tree / School Integration, or even longer? And what role has art played in this ancient, five thousand, do ideas about the black female figure truly begin—five hundred years ago, ” this poet adores her culture and the beauty to be found within it.

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Black Leopard, Red Wolf The Dark Star Trilogy

Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. Knopf Publishing Group. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

. Used book in Good Condition. The new york times bestseller "A fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made. Neil gaiman "Gripping, action-packed. The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe. Michiko kakutani, myth, fantasy, the new york times the epic novel, from the man booker prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, an African Game of Thrones, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child.

As tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose, " people say. As he struggles to survive, really, tracker starts to wonder: who, is this boy? why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying? Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read.

Don't Call Us Dead: Poems

Some of us are killed / in pieces, ” Smith writes, “some of us all at once. Don’t call us dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America―“Dear White America”―where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle. Used book in Good Condition.

Black leopard, red wolf the dark Star Trilogy Hardcover - February 5, 2019. Finalist for the national book award for poetrywinner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection“Smith's poems are enriched to the point of volatility, often, but they pay out, in sudden joy. The new yorker award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, urgent subjects, celebrated for deft lyrics, and performative power.

. Knopf Publishing Group. Don’t call us dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, violence, a place where suspicion, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality―the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood―and a diagnosis of HIV positive.

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Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1995-2015

Longlisted for the national book awarda 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. From his stunning lyric debut most way home, “remixed” for knopf in 2005, 1995 and the amazing “double album” life of jean-Michel Basquiat 2001, 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, southern food, the profoundly felt poems here of family, 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.

Used book in Good Condition. 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. Knopf Publishing Group. Black leopard, red wolf the dark Star Trilogy Hardcover - February 5, 2019.

Alfred a Knopf Inc.

Duende: Poems

Duende gives passionate testament to suppressed cultures, and allows them to sing. Used book in Good Condition. The award-winning second collection by the poet Laureate of the United StatesDuende, that dark and elusive force described by Federico García Lorca, is the creative and ecstatic power an artist seeks to channel from within.

Black leopard, red wolf the dark Star Trilogy Hardcover - February 5, 2019. Tracy K. Alfred a Knopf Inc. It can lead the artist toward revelation, Lorca says, but it must also, accept and even serenade the possibility of death. Knopf Publishing Group. Smith's bold second poetry collection explores history and the intersections of folk traditions, political resistance, and personal survival.

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