For the Confederate Dead

In this passionate new collection Kevin Young takes up a range of African American griefs and passages. He opens with the beautiful “Elegy for Miss Brooks” invoking Gwendolyn Brooks who died in 2000 and who makes a perfect muse for the volume: “What the devil / are we without you?” he asks. “I tuck your voice laced / tight in these brown shoes.” In that spirit of intimate community Young gives us a saucy ballad of Jim Crow a poem about Lionel Hampton's last concert in Paris an “African Elegy” which addresses the tragic loss of a close friend in conjunction with the first anniversary of 9/11 and a series entitled “Americana” in which we encounter a clutch of mythical southern towns such as East Jesus (“The South knows ruin & likes it / thataway—the barns becoming / earth again leaning in—”) and West Hell (“Sin thy name is this / wait—this place— / a long ways from Here / to There”). For the Confederate Dead finds Young more than ever before in a poetic space that is at once public and personal. In the marvelous “Guernica” Young’s account of a journey through Spain blends with the news of an American lynching prompting him to ask “Precious South / must I save you / or myself?” In this surprising book the poet manages to do a bit of both embracing the contradictions of our “Confederate” legacy and the troubled nation where that legacy still lingers.