Book of Hours: Poems

A decade after the sudden and tragic loss of his father, we witness the unfolding of grief. In the night I brush / my teeth with a razor, he tells us, in one of the collections piercing two-line poems. Capturing the strange silence of bereavement (Not the storm / but the calm / that slays me), Kevin Young acknowledges, even celebrates, lifes passages, his loss transformed and tempered in a sequence about the birth of his son: in Crowning, he delivers what is surely one of the most powerful birth poems written by a man, describing her face / full of fire, then groaning your face / out like a flower, 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 arent / used up? while understanding How to listen / to whats gone. Youngs 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 lifes mysteries.