**SHORTLISTED FOR THE T.S. ELIOT PRIZE 2021**
A book of loss, looking back, and what binds us to life, by a towering poetic talent, ''one of the poetry stars of his generation'' (Los Angeles Times).
''We sleep long, / if not sound,'' Kevin Young writes early on in this exquisite gathering of poems, ''Till the end / we sing / into the wind.'' In scenes and settings that circle family and the generations in the American South - one poem, ''Kith'', exploring that strange bedfellow of ''kin'' - the speaker and his young son wander among the stones of their ancestors. ''Like heat he seeks them, / my son, thirsting / to learn those / he don''t know / are his dead.''
Whether it''s the fireflies of a Louisiana summer caught in a mason jar (doomed by their collection), or his grandmother, Mama Annie, who latches the screen door when someone steps out for just a moment, all that makes up our flickering, precarious joy, all that we want to protect, is
