Kevin Young
speaker
1,056 appearances
8 recordings
4 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 26 Aug
Kevin Young’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 2.
Appearances
And so I don't have a preference.
I just think that the way that one encounters a poem, there's no wrong way to do it.
And the more the better.
Yeah, no, probably not.
That's how I heard it.
And sometimes the editor in me wants to go back and fix all those little blue notes.
But like Miles Davis says, it's not a mistake when I turn it into the music after it.
And so I think it's important to not smooth out all those rough edges in a poem.
One of the funnier things to those who've been in a poetry workshop or any kind of workshop is there was something where they had Emily Dickinson in a workshop and people correcting all her quirks and little things that are essential to understanding her, the dashes.
And if you see her actual draft, sometimes there's like plus signs and all these markations that I think are meant for us to understand that music she's hearing in her head.
I tried to let them in there and maybe they go far sometimes, but I also, you should understand that reading a poem, hearing a poem, it isn't the record of an event.
It's also an event.
And Robert Lowell who said that was having us think about this idea of the poem should do something on the page.
The occasion of the poem can't be something far from the poem.
It has to be part of it.
And for me, I always try to talk to my students or anyone who will listen, really, about the enacting that a poem should do.
And when a poem enacts a feeling, like grief, say, it's one of the most powerful things on earth.
And I really believe that, I treasure that.
And, you know, poetry has saved me in so many ways.
And I love to preach about its saving graces to others.
Showing 981–1000 of 1,056 · page 50 of 53
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