Kevin Young’s For the Confederate Dead

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Recommended: Negro poetry

As I gazed across the book isles and leaned over carefully to pick one up out of the old dusty vaults of the library, a familiar object caught my eye in the poetry section. A picture in time stood still on this book, of two African American men both holding guitars. I immediately was attracted to this book of poems. For the Confederate Dead, by Kevin Young, is what it read on the front in cursive lettering. I turned to the back of the book and “Jazz“, and “blues” popped out of the paper back book and into my brain. Sometimes you can judge a book by it’s cover, I thought. Kevin Young’s For the Confederate Dead is a book of poems influenced by blues and jazz in the deep rural parts of the south.

This Book was pretty much an easy read for me. His poems are not very long and cut to the chase. While reading them I noticed there was always something exciting that caught my attention to keep me reading on. In the first couple pages of “For the Confederate Dead”, the poems names are very organic. This is one of the reasons I was drawn into this book. With names like Flame, Water, Ai...

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