Kevin Young

Now it happens at a regular interval, so it's not as jagged as it might sound, but I really wanted it to have that quality and also provide a kind of coda both to the book, but also to that experience, which was, you know, quite strange.

I talk about it in the poem and, you know, this idea that I think I say something like, you know, maybe I can read it really quick.

Would you mind?

You should know that after you ready to meet the far stony shore, it is not hope but the strange fire of forgiveness that flares and fights there, not wanting to go, hoping only you'd said so long to all you knew, to the elms who also know what it means to be told you die and survive.

I wanted that kind of quality of the, you know, what does it mean to be faded and then not faded to feel like you are, you know, in limbo, quite literally up in the air.

And at the same time, then, you know, I'm here with you talking about it.

So clearly survived, but it was kind of a way of witnessing and the asterisks are just another way of highlighting that.

Well, it is a bit more ordered than some books of mine even, but I tend to open a book in the middle and read like front and back.

I read like a poet.

So however people want, you know, I do think there's something about hearing them aloud, which I love.

about it but a poem like darkling i don't know if you're meant to have it in one setting it's uh meant to be somewhat epic in the way that dante is though it's half as many cantos if you will but the journey i think is is the important thing whether it's the journey from front to back of the of the book or diving into darkling and you know it's also okay to jump around i mean i think what's powerful about dante is the way that

people have taken the Inferno for their own and, you know, people often don't even read the other sections.

So I hope you can read the other sections of mine, but I also want people to feel like they're not on a linear journey, but more a musical one and one that takes you through these places, spaces, ones that I think sometimes harmonize, but other times are dissonant.

That's part of the music I'm trying to create.

There's also a coyote, so...

Well, I hope they do take away hope from the collection in a way.

I think that whether it's that mailbox or the image of my son climbing a tree, these small moments, I think, are what The Extraordinary is made of.

And I think that

kind of idea of the miraculousness of the everyday was so important to me.

And to me, that's where paradise lies.