134 Quotes by Kevin Young

  • Author Kevin Young
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    Even Toni Morrison claiming Bill Clinton as 'black' could not prepare us for the election of America's first undeniably black president, Barack Obama.

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  • Author Kevin Young
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    The hoax is the very absence of truth, which usually means art is absent, too - hoaxes regularly substitute claims of reality for imagination, facts for form, acting as if artifice is the antithesis of art.

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  • Author Kevin Young
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    Listen to the late Isaac Hayes covering 'Walk on By' by Burt Bacharach or Mayfield singing The Carpenters' vanilla-seeming 'We've Only Just Begun,' and you realize soul's insistence on transformation: Mayfield in particular makes the song not just about love but the start of revolution.

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  • Author Kevin Young
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    Poems evolve. I don't feel like I choose them; they just come to me.

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  • Author Kevin Young
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    I try to read as a reader and also read as a writer. I mean, they're not so different.

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  • Author Kevin Young
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    Forget reparations - we need to rescue aspects of black culture abandoned even by black folks, whether it is the blues or home cookin' or broader forms of not just survival but triumph.

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  • Author Kevin Young
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    The question of sort of music and history, I think, are so important to understanding the poem as an idea but also us as people in the world.

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  • Author Kevin Young
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    A poem can provide testimony. A poem can provide solace. It can provide a connection.

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  • Author Kevin Young
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    In many ways, I feel like the form carries so much of the weight in a poem, obviously. But I think we sometimes forget that.

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