Brown : poems / Kevin Young ; photographs by Melanie Dunea.

Brown : poems / Kevin Young ; photographs by Melanie Dunea.

First edition.

9781524732547 hardcover
1524732540 hardcover

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2018.

©2018

English

vii, 161 pages ; 24 cm

811.54 Y73b 2018

(OCoLC)986864026
(OCoLC)986864026

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"-- Provided by publisher.

Online version: Young, Kevin, 1970- Brown. First edition. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2018

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