Night Watch: Poems
by Kevin Young

From award-winning poet Kevin Young comes When I Fly Away, a profound collection of poems chronicling the personal and national landscape of loss, renewal, and resilience. Written over a span of sixteen years, the collection captures beauty and difficulty alike, engaging memory, myth, and music to explore the cycles that define our lives and histories.

The journey begins in the bayous of Louisiana, tracing the poet’s family legacy before traveling into the philosophical depths of grief and hope. In the sequence “All Souls”, Young conjures haunting imagery of prayer and yearning, writing of “The whale / who finds the shore / & our poor prayers.”

Another key sequence, “The Two-Headed Nightingale,” is voiced by Millie-Christine McCoy, the conjoined African American twins born into slavery and later famed performers. Their complex inner lives and harmonized identities are captured in lines like: “As one we sang, / we spake— / She was the body / I the soul / Without one / Perishes the whole.”

In “Darkling,” a sweeping poetic cycle inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, Young reimagines Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, exploring isolation, memory, and salvation. He writes, “It’s like a language, / loss— / learnt only / by living—there—”, threading classical reference with contemporary resonance. He calls for subversion of sentimental mourning, declaring, “don’t dare sing Amazing Grace—” but rather, “Just burn the whole / Town on down.”

When I Fly Away is a masterwork by one of America’s most celebrated poets, uniting heartache, humor, and cultural insight into an unforgettable symphony of sorrow and strength.