Kevin Young

Well, I think the theme varies in some ways, but it really is centered around loss, but also forms of remembering.

And for me, place is a big part of the book in a weird way, even though places aren't always named, though it starts with a poem, Cormorant, which is about that.

fascinating bird that's all over southern Louisiana where my father's family's from.

And it's a poem very much remembering him remembering.

And one of the takeoff points of it is the ways that the cormorant is kind of like this considered lesser bird, you know, and

treated poorly in some ways, but has this regal nature.

And I always found it fascinating, and it had something to do for me about that landscape.

And then the other sections sort of get progressively longer.

All Souls is a poem, I think, that's wrestling with

Issues of remembering, but also loss.

There's a coyote in there, you know, you got to have a coyote in the poem.

And then you have a poem like Two-Headed Nightingale, which is longer still, and it's really returning to this idea of

these two enslaved people, Millie and Christine McCoy, who were sisters, but they were also conjoined twins.

What I was fascinated about them is they often refer to themselves as singular and they say, I. And so the poem really is a philosophical meditation on

what it means to be singular and plural at the same time.

And along the way, because she was born enslaved and stolen then and displayed as this sort of miracle of nature or a freak of nature, depending on how you viewed it.

And she viewed herself as a miracle.

And after she gets her freedom, she sings and tours Europe and is really fetid.

And I was really curious about

this person who had this doubleness, especially at a time during the Civil War when the nation was divided and in some ways feels a little bit like now in the kinds of divisions.