QS36501007628Night Watch: Poems

ANEW YORK TIMESNOTABLE BOOK LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR POETRY ANew York Times Book ReviewEditors’ Choice From the award-winning poet at the height of his career, a book of personal and American experiences, both beautiful and troubling, touching on the generative cycle of loss and renewal

“Night Watchcontinues one of the most vital currents in contemporary poetry, transforming history and its silences into lyric through the poets eloquent invitation: O wounded soul,/ speak.The New York Times

Following on his exquisiteStones, Kevin Youngs new collection, written over the span of sixteen years, shapes stories of loss and legacy, inspired in part by other lives. After starting in the bayous of his family’s Louisiana, Young journeys to further states of mind in All Souls, evoking The whale / who finds the shore / & our poor prayers. Another central sequence, The Two-Headed Nightingale, is spoken by Millie-Christine McCoy, the famous conjoined African American Carolina Twins. Born into enslavement, stolen, and then displayed by P. T. Barnum and others, the twins later toured the world as free women, their alto and soprano voices harmonizing their own way. Youngs poem explores their evolving philosophical selfhood and pluralities: As one we sang, /we spake / She was the body / I the soul / Without one / Perishes the whole.
In Darkling, a cycle of poems inspired by DantesDivine Comedy, Young expands and embroiders the circles of Hell, drawing a cosmology of both loneliness and accompaniment, where the dead dont know / what to do / with themselves. Young writes of grief and hope as familiar yet surprising states: Its like a language, / loss, he writes, learnt only / by livingthere. Evoking the history of poetry, from the darkling thrush to the darkling plain, Young is defiant and playful on the way through purgatory to a kind of paradise. When he goes, he warns, don’t dare singAmazing Gracethat National / Anthem of Suffering. Instead, he suggests, When I Fly Away, / Don’t dare hold no vigil . . . Just burn the whole / Town on down.
This collection will stand as one of Youngs besthis voice shaping sorrow with music, wisdom, heartache, and wit.

KEVIN YOUNG is the author of sixteen books of poetry and prose, including his most recent,Night Watch.He is the poetry editor ofThe New Yorker, where he hosts thePoetry Podcast, and the editor of eleven volumes, includingA Century of Poetry in the New Yorker, 1925-2025and the acclaimed anthologyAfrican American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song. He currently serves as the Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publish Date: September 02, 2025
• Pages: 176
• Language: English
• Type: Hardback
• EAN/UPC: 9780593319628
• Dimensions: 9.2 X 6.2 X 0.7 inches | 0.8 pounds
• BISAC Categories: Poetry