I was at the Furious Flower Poetry conference in 2004 when Young gave a reading, and there, he noted the loss of his father in a tragic hunting accident. I was especially interested in the first sections of the volume where he writes about the loss of his father. This year, I was on Young's Book of Hours (2014), which was published back in March. I've tried to keep up with his active book publishing for the last 10 years or so. After spending so much time on 1960s and 1970s writers, I was looking to catch up on contemporary poets, and well, there was Young. I really started playing close attention to Young's poetry in 2003 or 2004, right after I completed my major research project on the Black Arts Movement. I view my arrival to Young's works as late because of his previously published books at the time-his volume Most Way Home (1995) and the anthology he edited Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers (2000). I came across To Repel Ghosts (2001) in around 2002. In some respects, I felt like I discovered Kevin Young late.
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