K. C. STAR ANNOUNCES 2014 NOTABLE POETRY BOOKS

The Kansas City Star includes poetry among its priorities in reviewing, a rare opportunity, through the year, to learn of new works by contemporary versifiers. I feel lucky to be able to contribute as a regular reviewer and as a compiler of this list. Nine of the one-hundred 2014 Notable KC Star books are poetry:

Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems by William Stafford (Graywolf), Blood Lyric, by Katie Ford (Graywolf), Book of Hours by Kevin Young (Knopf).  Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf), Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Gluck (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), Put This on, Please by William Trowbridge (Red Hen), Wolf Centos by Simone Muench (Sarabande), Woman With a Gambling Mania by Catherine Anderson (Mayapple), Collected Haiku of Yosa Buson translated by W.S. Merwin and Takako Lento (Copper Canyon).

Compilers of this list are: Darryl Levings (KC Star books editor), Steve Paul (former KC Star books editor and editorial staff), Brian Burnes (KC Star columnist), Edward M. Eveld (KC Star); and regular KC Star reviewers: Kevin Canfield, Liz Cook, Jeffrey Ann Goudie, Anne Kniggendorf, Denise Low, Christine Pivovar, Sebastian Stockman and Steve Weinberg. University of Missouri-Kansas City English Department members consulted are: Hadara Bar-Nadav, Christie Hodgen and Whitney Terrell. The list includes fiction, nonfiction, and verse. See the entire listing of 100 Notable Books with commentary:

http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/article4431734.html#storylink=cpy

10 Poets among Kansas City Star top 100 books of 2012

Poets selected for the KC Star top 100 books include Julianne Buchsbaum, Heid Erdrich, Jack Gilbert, Lucille Clifton, Albert Goldbarth, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Natasha Trethewey, and Mary Jo Bang (translation of Dante's Inferno). Poets with nonfiction books that are in the list are Kevin Young (The Grey Album) and Gerald Stern (Stealing History).

I was honored to be one of 17 curators for this "best-of" list, edited by Steve Paul of the KC Star. You will see the KC-area and national perspectives represented in fiction, non-fiction, mystery, poetry, and young readers. See more details:

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/29/v-print/3940050/the-stars-top-100-books-of-2012.html

See my KC Star "data fusion" reviews of Albert Goldbarth, Jordan Stempleman, Heid Erdrich, and Kevin Young

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/22/3507070/on-poetry-four-titles-are-well.html

Historic Days & Celebration of Kevin Young, Author of Dear Darkness & Other Volumes of Poetry

Dear Poetry Friends:
On this historic day, as we finish celebrating Martin Luther King Day and turn to the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama, please join me in celebrating one of the most outstanding of the young generation of poets to be educated by Kansas public schools, Kevin Young.

He received an excellent background in Topeka schools, attended Harvard, and then received an MFA from one of the leading creative writing programs at Brown University. He still has family in Kansas—William Tuttle, the Kansas University historian, is his father-in-law. Every time I see Bill, he updates me on the perfect grandchild and Kevin’s family’s news. I have had the pleasure of watching Kevin develop as a poet since he was in junior high. I have a poem of his from those junior high days, which I’ve promised not to reprint. I see Kevin at creative writing conferences, and he is a fine performer of poetry.

Oh yes, do look for a commemoration article I wrote for the Kansas City Star to comment upon the importance of arts in Obama’s administrative priorities.

Enjoy!
Denise Low 2007-2009 Kansas Poet Laureate

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KEVIN YOUNG (1970 - )

AD ASTRA POETRY PROJECT # 29: KEVIN YOUNG

KEVIN YOUNG (1970 - )

Kevin Young, born in Nebraska, spent middle and high school in Topeka before attending Harvard University. He is a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, and he is a renowned poet and editor. He has won Guggenheim, NEA, and Stegner Fellowships. Young was once a student of mine in a summer creative writing workshop for middle school students at Washburn University. When he was still a teenager, Thomas Fox Averill of Washburn sponsored Young to edit a book of poetry by Kansas poet Edgar Wolfe. These early opportunities make a difference for youngsters, as his career shows. I hope this example encourages teachers and community arts program leaders.

Young’s poetry shows influences of Langston Hughes and the blues, with lean lines and sharp images, but he definitely has his own voice. This poem appears to be set in the Kaw River valley, where ash trees grow. The meditation on childhood begins with a “welcome” from the woods. He describes chicken-of-the-woods fungi on fallen trees, which seem to be listening ears. Beyond sight woodpeckers can be heard—which references John Keats’ nightingale. The pivot in the poem comes before the halfway mark, with the question: “Where is nature human?” The narrator looks down from canopy heights to the ground, and the mood darkens. With the poem’s nightfall, aging begins, and also a process of confusion. Young uses vivid comparisons to explain this mystery: strips of bark on the ground are a coded text. Darkness is like dangerous depths of water. In the last two lines is another shift, as mosquitoes bite: “Wish /them well. Wave.” The poem tells us to embrace the dark.


CHILDHOOD

Autumn & the leaves turn
to people—yellow, brown,
red—then die. Only ash
trees stay white, standing—

the woods welcome you, trail
like a tongue, half-hidden.
Ears cover fallen trees:
pale mushrooms, listening.

Stop & you can hear
the peckerwoods high up.
Where is nature
human? On the ground

bark thin & pale
as paper, coded Morse.
You are lost, path
unmarked. It grows

dark, you older, night
around you like a lake
you’ve swum out too far
into—tread moonlight

while the bugs begin
taking your blood
for their children. Wish
them well. Wave.

Education: Kevin Young graduated from Topeka West High School. He has an A.B. in English and American Literature (Harvard University 1992) and MFA in Creative Writing (Brown University 1996).
Career: Kevin Young's books are Most Way Home (William Morrow, 1995), National Poetry Series; To Repel Ghosts (Zoland Books 2001), finalist for Academy of American Poets prize; Jelly Roll: A Blues (Alfred A. Knopf 2003), finalist for 2003 National Book Award in Poetry; Black Maria (Alfred A. Knopf 2005); and Dear Darkness (Alfred A. Knopf 2008). Young edits anthologies from Harper Perennial and Everyman. Young's poetry and essays have appeared widely in print & electronic media.
____________________________________________________________________________________________© 2009 Denise Low, AAPP 29 © 2008 “Childhood,” Kevin Young, from Dear Darkness: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf), reprinted with permission of the author © 2007 Denise Low, photograph