Kevin Young

Kevin Young is the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, recently named a National Historic Landmark, and poetry editor of the New Yorker, where he also hosts the poetry podcast. He is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose, most recently Brown (Knopf, 2018), as featured on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah; Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015 (Knopf, 2016), longlisted for the National Book Award; and Book of Hours (Knopf, 2014), a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize for Poetry from the Academy of American Poets. His collection Jelly Roll: a blues (Knopf, 2003) was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020. He will be the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture starting in January 2021. Source

Ode to the Midwest

The country I come from is called the Midwest —Bob Dylan

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

anyone’s awake

that’ll put em to shame—

I want to see what the sun

sees before it tells

the snow to go. I want to be

the only black person I know.

I want to throw

out my back & not

complain about it.

I wanta drive

two blocks. Why walk—

I want love, n stuff—

I want to cut

my sutures myself.

I want to jog

down to the river

& make it my bed—

I want to walk

its muddy banks

& make me a withdrawal.

I tried jumping in,

found it frozen—

I’ll go home, I guess,

to my rooms where the moon

changes & shines

like television.

Published:

2007

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2021

2023

Themes:

Agency

Humor & Satire

Poems of Place