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 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 2.

Appearances

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The New Yorker: Poetry · Mark Wunderlich Reads Spencer Reece · 26 Aug 2026 podcast

Martin Luther King and this kind of tradition of the sermon

as a social act, not just a Sunday act, let's call it.

Um, I think is really powerful and and at work here.

But also I I I started thinking about Gerard Manley Hopkins and Hopkins's sonnets and his kind of notion of sprung rhythm and these kind of internal rhymes, which I see working here.

Uh were you thinking of Hopkins at all or do you think Spencer was?

More from my conversation with Mark Wonderlich after the break.

Mark, welcome back.

Thanks so much,

Now on our december twenty first, twenty twenty issue, the New Yorker published your poem, The Bats, which you'll read for us in a moment.

Is there anything you want us to know before we hear it?

I think I'll just read the poem.

Excellent.

Well we'll talk more after we hear it.

Here's Mark Wunderlich reading his poem The Bats.

That was The Bats by Mark Wonderlick.

Hearing you read it, I'm so struck by the sound since that's where we left talking about Spencer.

And how conscious were you of the rhymes as you were going, or did they come organically, or is that something you know, were you trying to craft a a form here?

Now you're just bragging.

I mean uh 'cause I think the rhyme is at times full beams and dreams, a a lovely but unexpected uh end there.

But also it's often slant gap and dip and why slant there?

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