"Kevin Young is the poetry editor for The New Yorker, and the author of many books of his own poetry. His newest work, " Night Watch," focusses on death, while also drawing upon his wide view of history, from the end of slavery in the U.S. to Dante's seven-hundred-year-old poem the Divine Comedy."
""This is a book that, I think, without him, I would have kept in a drawer because the subjects were kind of dark that I was trying to contend with, and [Dante] gave a framework for me," Young explains. "How do you write about [hell] and frame it as a journey rather than a morass?""
Poems center on death and mortality while reaching across history from the end of slavery in the United States to Dante’s seven-hundred-year-old Divine Comedy. Dante’s portrayal of hell provides a structural frame that turns dark material into a guided journey rather than an undifferentiated morass. The work interweaves intimate reflections on loss with historical breadth, juxtaposing contemporary experience against long literary and historical continuities. The Dantean framework permits formal movement through suffering, enabling exploration of grief, memory, and moral reckoning with clarity and ordered progression.
Read at The New Yorker
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