Kevin Young
reads from
Book of Hours:
Poems
Co-sponsored by Mass Poetry and Woodberry Poetry Room
This event includes a book signing
DateMar
10
Monday
March 10, 2014 7:00 PM ET |
LocationHarvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138 |
Tickets
This event is free; no tickets are required.
|
Harvard Book Store, Mass Poetry, and the Woodberry Poetry Room are pleased to welcome National Book Award finalist KEVIN YOUNG for a reading of his poetry collection Book of Hours.
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 collection’s piercing two-line poems. Capturing the strange silence of bereavement (“Not the storm / but the calm / that slays me”), Kevin Young acknowledges, even celebrates, life’s 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 aren’t / used up?” while understanding “How to listen / to what’s gone.”
Young’s 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 life’s mysteries.
Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes
As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.
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Harvard Book Store is anticipating National Poetry Month in April with a series of events this March. The Road to Poetry Month series includes events with poets Kevin Young and Dan Chiasson as well as biographer Susan Cheever for her new book on the life of E. E. Cummings.
Mass Poetry: http://masspoetry.org/
Woodberry Poetry Room: http://hcl.harvard.edu/poetryroom/
Featured event books will be for sale at the event for 20% off. Thank you for supporting this author series with your purchases.
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