Kevin+Young

Biography: Kevin Young was born in Lincoln Nebraska on November 8, 1970. He is the author of eleven books of poetry. He's also won lots of awards. Like for his book The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness he won the Graywolf Notification Prize, and the PEN Open Award. Kevin teaches create writing and English at Emory University. He also is the editor of lots of poetry anthologies. Young is also Charles Howard Candler Professor of creative writing. The San Francisco Chronicle said that, "Kevin Young is one of the most talented poets in the United States."

Troix Harper

I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

I am hoping to hang your head

on my wall in shame—

the slightest taxidermy thrills me. Fish

forever leaping on the living-room wall—

paperweights made from skulls

of small animals. I want to wear

your smile on my sleeve & break

your heart like a horse or its leg. Weeks of being

bucked off, then all at once, you're mine—

Put me down.

I want to call you thine

to tattoo mercy along my knuckles. I assassin down the avenue I hope

to have you forgotten by noon. To know you

by your knees palsied by prayer.

Loneliness is a science—

consider the taxidermist's tender hands

trying to keep from losing skin, the bobcat grin of the living.

Kevin Young is telling a story about loneliness and love. He uses many different emotional appeals to attract to the readers senses of love, empathy, and passion. He also uses free verse when he wrote this poem. We have all been in Kevin’s place at some point in our life dealing with loneliness and love, whether it’s with your first love or crush, a friend, or a family member. So in this poem Kevin expresses love loneliness. The first two stanzas show how Kevin is wanting for the need and love for someone, but knows that they will only bring shame and pain to him if they are in his life. Which I feel like suck because everyone should find happiness. He also uses the word taxidermy, which means the art of preparing, stuffing, and mounting the skins of animals with lifelike effect to distract from his loneliness, and show things he loves like he fish forever leaping, and the paperweights he has of tiny animals. He then goes back into a lonely mood and tells that if he would wear his special “ someone’s” smile on his sleeve, but contradicts himself by saying that he would break their heart like a horses leg. At the very end of the poem he sees that instead of breaking his special someone’s heart he would really like to have them in his life. He says that no one should have to go through loneliness, and not receive love just like a taxidermist takes special attention, and love into getting the animals pelts perfectly off. This symbolizes that he is not lonely because his love is in the taxidermist’s work. Hints the fish leaping from wall to wall, and without the taxidermist taking special attention to the animal pelts and loving what he does, Kevin wouldn’t have his happiness and the things he loves most. When I read this poem my reaction was at first I felt sad for him, but then I realized that in the end he got exactly what he wanted.

Young, Kevin. "Poetry Magazine." //Poetry Foundation//. Poetry Foundation. Web. 21 Jan. 2016. "Biography." //Kevin Young//. Web. 22 Jan. 2016. Hunter, Kevin Young - Poem. "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart Poe

= Ode to the Midwest = I want to be doused in cheese //&// fried. I want to wander the aisles, my heart's supermarket stocked high as cholesterol. I want to die wearing a sweatsuit— I want to live forever in a Christmas sweater, a teddy bear nursing off the front. I want to write

a check in the express lane. I want to scrape my driveway clean

myself, early, before <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">anyone's awake— <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">that'll put em to shame— <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">I want to see what the sun <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">sees before it tells <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">the snow to go. I want to be <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">the only black person I know. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">I want to throw <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">out my back //&// not <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">complain about it. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">I wanta drive <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">two blocks. Why walk— <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">I want love, n stuff— <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">I want to cut <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">my sutures myself. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">I want to jog <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">down to the river <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">//&// make it my bed— <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">I want to walk <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">its muddy banks <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">//&// make me a withdrawal. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">I tried jumping in, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">found it frozen— <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">I'll go home, I guess, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">to my rooms where the moon <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">changes //&// shines <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #505050; display: block; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">like television.

Kevin Young is telling about a story about being happy, and living without a care in the world. What’s unique about this poem is that he got the idea to make this poem from Bob Dylan. In the beginning of the poem he uses the quote, “The country I come from is called the Midwest.” In this poem Kevin uses funny sentences like in the first two stanzas. He say, “I want to be doused in cheese & fried.” When I read that line a chuckled because that sounds like every big person’s dream. This is a real shellfish poem because it has a lot of “I’s” in it. There isn’t a rhyme scheme in this poem. There is no beat to this poem. This poem is free verse. He writes a lot of his poems like this. I’ve noticed in some of Kevin’s poems that I have read he’s all about being happy, in love, and peaceful. He uses a simile in stanzas two through three when he says, “I want to wander the aisles, my heart’s supermarket stocked as cholesterol.” Young also uses long lines after some of his words which can be seen in lines 8, 17, 18, 27, 28, 33, and 38. These long lines after the words indicate that he is taking a long pause after he says that line. Some of the lines are clues meaning he doesn’t give a full description on what he is talking about. You have to use context clues in order to get what he’s saying. This poem was one of my favorites that Kevin Young wrote. I feel like he’s speaking the truth. The message he is trying to get through to people through this poem is that you need to let go, and be crazy sometimes. Don’t always live that boring old life.

Young, Kevin. "Poetry Magazine." //Poetry Foundation//. Poetry Foundation. Web. 22 Jan. 2016. "Peaceful Place Quotes." //. QuotesGram//. Web. 22 Jan. 2016.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: transparent; display: block; font-family: serif; font-size: 19.0588px;"> = = = Negative =

Wake to find everything black what was white, all the vice versa—white maids on TV, black

sitcoms that star white dwarfs cute as pearl buttons. Black Presidents, Black Houses. White horse

candidates. All bleach burns clothes black. Drive roads <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: transparent; display: block; font-family: serif; font-size: 19.0588px;"> white as you are, white songs

on the radio stolen by black bands like secret pancake recipes, white back-up singers, ball-players & boxers all

white as tar. Feathers on chickens dark as everything, boiling in the pot that called the kettle honky. Even

whites of the eye turn dark, pupils clear & changing as a cat's. Is this what we've wanted

& waited for? to see snow covering everything black as Christmas, dark pages written

white upon? All our eclipses bright, dark stars shooting across pale sky, glowing like ash in fire, shower

every skin. Only money keeps green, still grows & burns like grass under dark daylight.

In the poem “Negative” by Kevin Young everything is the total opposite. I feel that there are three different ways you can go about this poem. One being he’s trying to talk about how black people always wanted the white people to be in their shoes or just to switch roles with the white people so he flipped everything around. Not just human color I got this idea from when he said in lines 2-5 when he says, “white maids on TV, black sitcoms that star white dwarfs cute as pearl buttons. Black Presidents, Black Houses.” It seems like he is granting the wish that many black people have wanted, and that’s to switch places with the white people. Another way I looked at it was that people are focused on the wrong thi ng. Instead of worrying about the color of someone’s skin we need to worry about how money is the root of all evil. No matter how much you try to change the world, and turn things into a different color the money will still be the same, more will be produced, and it will continue to rule over everything. This was basically mentioned in lines 25- 27 when he said, “Only money keeps green, still grows & burns like grass under dark daylight.” The last way I looked at this poem was almost everything is a contradiction. Like in lines 22-24 when he said, “All our eclipses bright dark stars shooting across pale sky, glowing like ash in fire.” We know that eclipses don’t deal with the dark. Eclipse mean an obscuring of light, so putting light and dark in the same sente nce is a contradiction. Another contradiction is “glowing like ash on fire” ash isn’t something that glows. Ash is a dark grey substances that comes from the fire. So putting the words glowing and ash together in same sentence is a contradiction. These things don’t coincide together. This poem doesn’t have a rhyme scheme to it. I’m seeing that a lot of Kevin Young’s poems don’t have rhyme schemes to them. This poem made me really look at the world like we are worried about the wrong stuff in life when we need to worry about how money is basically the root of all evil.

"Poetry Out Loud : Negative." Poetry Out Loud : Negative. Web. 03 Feb. 2016.

"Your Brain Develops The Negative – Webvision." //Your Brain Develops The Negative – Webvision//. Web. 04 Feb. 2016.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: transparent; display: block; font-family: serif; font-size: 19.0588px;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: transparent; display: block; font-family: serif; font-size: 19.0588px;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: transparent; display: block; font-family: serif; font-size: 19.0588px;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: transparent; display: block; font-family: serif; font-size: 19.0588px;"> I don’t believe in sex after marriage.
 * Slow Drag Blues **

My wife does, just not with me.

I plead the Fifth of whiskey. I am close to perfecting a theory of forgettability.

Grief a dog that keeps dogging me—

Good Grief, I say. It’s me he’s teaching to beg— my next anniversary

is newspaper, yesterday’s— lining my cage—

Tomorrow the day I hope to learn to stay.

n the poem “Slow Drag Blues” by Kevin Young, he opens up the poem by saying he doesn’t believe in sex after marriage in line 1. Which contradicts the popular statement I’m waiting until marriage before sex. Just like in the last poem he is using contradictions again. His wife however believes in sex after marriage, but she doesn’t want to have this emotional connection with him. The next stanza says he is ready to perfect a theory of forgettability which is signaling he is trying to forget about the hurt that his wife has done to him by saying she doesn’t want sex after marriage with him. The rest of the poem Kevin compares himself to a dog after realizing metaphorically that whatever he is searching and can’t seem to find, is deep within himself. He then explains that the next anniversary he will try to be a better husband to his wife or whoever he is with, but for the time being he will continue to be the dog which he says in line 15-16, “is newspaper, yesterday’s— lining my cage—.” “Yesterday” in this line meaning he will put the past behind him and “Tomorrow” the day meaning the future. When he says, “I hope to learn to stay” in the last line means to be a better person and stay true to himself and his wife. This poem speaks to me on an emotional standpoint. You can feel the hurt in Kevin’s writing, and also to realize that he needs to change and start viewing other people’s wishes and perspectives with open arms. This can also be viewed from the perspective of Kevin’s wife saying how she does want sex after marriage and just not with Kevin, but then realizes that she is the dog that is constantly hurting people which is shown in line 9-10 when he says, “Grief a dog that keeps dogging me.” After finally coming to that realization she is going to try, and work on herself and learn to stay, instead of leaving someone because their beliefs don’t exactly add up. There isn’t any rhyme scheme in this poem either.

"Slow Drag Blues - The New Yorker." The New Yorker. Web. 03 Feb. 2016.

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