134 Quotes by Kevin Young

This world is rigged with ruin.

I have begun to believe in, and even to preach, a poetry of necessity. This is a recognition not just of the necessity of poetry to our lives, but also the fact that necessity is what drives most of the poetry that matters, or the way that it matters.

Like hot foodI love youlike warmbread & coldcuts, buttersammichesor, days later, afterThanksgivingwhen I wantwhatever's left

Every pore mourns. Not the brain, nor the chest where bereavement nests, but the body, whole--how it burns. The ache of new bone being grown.

He said being dead was a little like living, only longer.

Grief might be easy if there wasn't still such beauty--would be far simpler if the silver maple didn't thrust its leaves into flame,trusting that springwill find it again.

It never ends, the bruise of being

I think it is in grief that we need some reminder of our humanity--and sometimes, someone to say it for us. Poetry steps in at those moments when ordinary words fail: poetry as ceremony, as closure to what cannot be closed.

Did Dolezal really fool those black folks around her? I have a strange feeling she didn't, that many simply humored her. You have to do this with white people, from time to time.