#17. Dear Darkness: Poems, by Kevin Young

[whereweather.livejournal.com]

#17. Dear Darkness: Poems, Kevin Young
Knopf, 2008

Been away for a while, now back.  And I've been reading a lot of books!

First, Dear Darkness, by Emory University poetry professor and National Book Award finalist Kevin Young.  This book, and its writer, had been heavily recommended to me by a lot of people.  I have to admit that I was kind of disappointed.  While Young's themes are fresh and interesting, and there is definitely an inherent interest to the kind of experimental work he was doing with blues and other musical forms, I didn't feel like a lot of his earlier work really held up to the expectations that the heft of this collection and the weight of his formal repetitions tend to engender.  I mean, the work was solid, but I didn't find it particularly illuminated, luminous or memorable.  Do you know what I mean?  Which is, admittedly, a lot to expect, but when you look at someone with the sheer weight of awards this guy has, and his incredible career momentum and early success, you kind of expect a lot. 

Sometimes, honestly, the poems just seemed dumb to me.  Young has a tendency to pun, and it is pretty tricky business to try to make a couple of quick, glittery (and sometimes LAME-ASS) puns carry the weight of a poem.  I admit that it has entered my mind that Young might be one of those examples of someone who met such success, so early, that it did their work a serious disservice: if everything you write gets published, you aren't forced to mature.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised to find my opinion altering near the very end of the book -- though "pleasant" is not really the best word to use for this work.  Young's most recent work, which is informed by a sort of desperate sorrow about his father's early death, seems to me to have gotten richer, to have, as it were, matured.  He has approached this work by writing, of all things, odes to food, which seems like not the obvious approach to take to these issues, but which, I think, often works really, really well.  (And which suggests a number of interesting and potentially useful metaphors, as well, for the ways that poetry can mature: can mellow, can find its themes and flavors blending, harmoniously and surprisingly, at last.)

There's a fair amount of Kevin Young material on the Web.  Here are:

a short bio with links to several poems

Young reading his own work -- this is supposed to be worth hearing

a recent poem in the New Yorker, about the birth of a child

a sample poem: "Ode to Pepper Vinegar."

April 13: Ode to Pepper Vinegar by Kevin Young

In the aftermath of the sudden and unexpected loss of his father, Kevin Young found himself composing a series of food odes—odes to grits and crawfish and okra; an “Elegy for Maque Choux,” a “Song of Cracklin.” Perhaps a way of feeding the unassuagable hunger of grief, the poems form a symphony of family remembrance which stands at the center of his latest volume, Dear Darkness.

Ode to Pepper Vinegar

You sat in the tomb

of our family fridge
for years, without

fail. You were all

I wanted covering
my greens, satisfaction

I’ve since sought

for years in restaurants
which claimed soul, but neither

knew you nor

your vinegar prayer.
Baby brother

of bitterness, soothsayer,

you taught
me the difference between loss

& holding on. Next to the neon

of the maraschino cherries,
you floated & stayed
constant as a flame

on an unknown soldier’s grave—
I never did know

how you got here

you just were. Adrift
in your mason jar

you were a briny bit of where

we came from, rusty lid
awaiting our touch

& tongue—you were faith

in the everyday, not rare
as the sugarcane

my grandparents sent north

come Christmas, drained
sweet & dry, delicious, gone

by New Year’s—

no, you were nearer,
familiar, the thump

thump of an upright bass

or the brass
of a funeral band

bringing us home.

Comments

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I haven't read anything else by Kevin Young, but the Ode to Pepper Vinegar is lovely. Food has a lot of untapped poetic potential, I think, and he makes this both sweet and melancholy - like a very good vinegar.