Kevin Young on His Book “Night Watch,” Inspired by Death and Dante

Summary

Podcast Summary: Kevin Young on His Book “Night Watch,” Inspired by Death and Dante (The New Yorker Radio Hour – Sept 16, 2025)

Episode Overview

In this episode, David Remnick sits down with Kevin Young—acclaimed poet, editor, and anthologist—to discuss his latest poetry book "Night Watch." The conversation explores the book's complex engagement with history, music, grief, and the influence of Dante's "Divine Comedy," as well as Young's treatment of fascinating historical figures and contemporary questions of art, politics, and memory.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Kevin Young's Literary Journey and Themes (00:14–01:51)

• Prolific Career & Thematic Throughlines:
  Remnick highlights Young's many roles: New Yorker poetry editor, anthologist (notably of grief), and author dealing with blues and the Black experience.
• Night Watch’s Core Themes:
  Young notes that “Night Watch” focuses on loss and music—this time drawing more from spirituals than from blues or jazz. The book is rooted in Louisiana, an ever-present place in his work due to his family history.
  • “It thinks about loss, but it also thinks about music… And it starts in Louisiana, which is definitely a theme of my book.” (01:16–01:51)

2. Grappling with Dante & Darkness (01:51–03:55)

• Dialogue with Dante:
  Tackling Dante is a bold move, and Young positions him as a literary guide more than a rival.
  • “He [Dante] gave a framework for me to… frame it as a journey rather than a morass, you know? Dante is kind of my guide through it in that way.” (02:00–02:52)
• Pandemic Parallels:
  Young says revisiting his work during the pandemic evoked Dantean darkness. The book became a poetic journey through that experience.

3. Reading from "Darkling"—On Mourning & Language (03:55–05:08)

• Poem Excerpt: “Ledge” from ‘Darkling’
  Young reads a section reflecting on loss, communication after death, and inherited wisdom from his mother.
  • “No use telling the dead what you've learned / since they've learned it too. / ... It's like a language loss can be learnt only by living there.” (03:59–05:08)

4. The Role of Humor (05:08–06:06)

• Finding Humor in the Dark:
  Remnick praises Young’s ability to be funny within philosophical poetry. Young affirms humor is embedded in both Dante and Black musical traditions.
  • “Sometimes I want to make you laugh in the midst.” (05:32–05:51)
• Early Poetry:
  Young reflects humorously on his solemn first poems—about the sea, written in Kansas.

5. Family, History, and the African American Tradition (06:06–06:58)

• Turning to His Roots:
  Young describes how writing about family stories and the cadences of Louisiana speech shaped his voice. He underscores the importance of the Black church in searching for justice and hope.

6. Spotlight: Millie and Christine McCoy, the Two-Headed Nightingale (06:58–11:44)

• Historical Poetics:
  Young dedicates much of "Night Watch" to Millie and Christine McCoy, conjoined twins born enslaved, displayed as a spectacle, and later renowned for their singing.
  • “Their harmonies were incredibly close, as you can imagine, and were reportedly just incredible.” (08:49–09:08)
• Research Methods:
  Young sought their self-published pamphlets for direct perspectives. He wanted to see how these women wrote themselves into existence.
• Poem Excerpt—Evolution of Voice:
  Young reads from his poem “Two Headed Nightingale,” giving both the medicalized (italicized) and personal voices of the McCoys.
  • “Each of our hands a language / eight limbed, two headed, we own many tongues.” (11:20–11:44)

7. Poetry, History, and Political Pressure (14:40–19:10)

• On Being an Institutional Artist:
  Remnick notes Young’s institutional engagement in museums and libraries, raising questions about censorship and the politicization of history.
• Poetry as Living History:
  Young contrasts poetry’s ability to illuminate history with nonfiction’s sometimes static approach. He references his book "Bunk" and how the country’s relationship with “fakery” only worsened.
  • “How do we get past it?” (16:16–16:35)
• Poets Grappling with the Present:
  Young asserts that poets feel historical pressure, especially during the pandemic, embodying centuries of testimony.
• The New Yorker Centennial Anthology:
  Young discusses editing the anthology for the magazine's 100th anniversary, charting poetry’s engagement with history from Hughes to today.

8. The Political in Poetry (17:57–19:10)

• Are Poems More Political Now?
  Remnick asks if submissions are more political; Young observes poets increasingly and more successfully grapple with collective crises and justice.
  • “For a long time... people would say, can poetry be political? …I’d be like, what are you talking about, Mr. Dante? That’s a very political poem.” (18:21–18:39)
• The Black Poetic Tradition:
  Young notes that African American poetry has always been political, reflecting on justice, loss, and hope.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Loss and Language:
  “It’s like a language loss can be learnt only by living there.”
  — Kevin Young, reading from “Ledge” (04:24)

• On Dante as a Guide:
  “You can’t write about hell and be only. So how do you write about it and frame it as a journey rather than a morass?”
  — Kevin Young (02:17)

• On Humor in Poetry:
  “Sometimes I want to make you laugh in the midst.”
  — Kevin Young (05:44)

• On Millie and Christine McCoy:
  “Each of our hands a language eight limbed, two headed, we own many tongues.”
  — Kevin Young, from “Two Headed Nightingale” (11:35)

• On Poetry and Politics:
  “For a long time… people would say, can poetry be political? …I’d be like, what are you talking about, Mr. Dante? That’s a very political poem.”
  — Kevin Young (18:21–18:39)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro & Kevin Young’s background – 00:14–01:16
• Themes in "Night Watch" – 01:16–01:51
• Dante, Darkness & Literary Influence – 01:51–03:55
• Reading from “Darkling” – 03:59–05:08
• Humor in Poetry & Early Work – 05:08–06:06
• Family & Black Traditions – 06:06–06:58
• Millie & Christine McCoy—History & Poem – 06:58–11:44
• Institutional Work & Censorship – 14:40–16:14
• Poetry as Political & Historical Witness – 17:57–19:10
• Closing Remarks – 19:10–19:15

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Tone & Language

The episode balances intellect and warmth, with Young’s humor and depth matched by Remnick’s curiosity and respect. The discussion moves from personal loss to cultural history to the ever-political nature of poetry, always colored by specific, vivid language and lived experience.

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For New Listeners

This episode is a rich dive into how poetry can be both intensely personal and expansively historical. Young’s candid reflections, evocative readings, and observations about the role of the poet in our current moment make this a must-listen for anyone interested in literature, history, or the Black experience in America.

Transcript

[Narrator/Producer]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Kevin Young is the poetry editor of the New Yorker and the author of many books of his own poems. His newest is called Night Watch. The poems draw on Kevin's very wide view of history, from the end of the slavery era Back to Dante's 700-year-the Divine Comedy, and much more. I sat down recently with Kevin Young. Kevin, you are the poetry editor of the New Yorker, thank God. And I believe this is your 16th book. You're a great anthologist as well. I love that anthology you've done about grief. No memorial service needs look any farther than that book. It's an extraordinary book. And you've written about the blues and African American experience in general. And you've also published books of prose, too. So all to say that you're an extraordinary, prolific writer and editor. I wonder what themes you see at this point in your life that are running throughout everything.

[Kevin Young]

You know, I think this book, Night Watch, kind of exemplifies a lot of them. It thinks about loss, but it also thinks about music. And I think the music in this book is a slightly different music. It isn't necessarily blues or jazz, but it's sort of rooted in the spirituals in some sense. And it starts in Louisiana, which is definitely a theme of my book. Both my parents are from there, and it's a place I returned to a lot as a child, but also I return to in my writing. And it begins there, but then extends really into the realm of lots of other things, including the 19th century, all the way to Dante.

[David Remnick]

Now with this new book, it is also kind of a ballsy thing to invite comparison to Dante.

[Kevin Young]

I guess we all have our own Dante, right? And this is the moment that I wanted to try to. He helped me so much in a weird way, because 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 he gave a framework for me to. You can't write about hell and be only. So how do you write about it and frame it as a journey rather than a morass, you know? And I think Dante's. You know, he himself incorporates Virgil, of course, as his guide and through hell. And so Dante is kind of my guide through it in that way. And so I didn't think of him as someone I'm like, rivaling or following, but More like a guide, someone who's the greater master that I'm trying to get across and get through.

[David Remnick]

Dante's poem is supposed to lead us back toward another text. It's supposed to lead us toward reading the Bible again. That's at least a stated thing. But I think he was up to more mischief than that.

[Kevin Young]

Well, and he's getting revenge in some of them. There's a lot of strife in Florence at the time. You know, he's trying to write about now through eternity. And I was just always struck by, you know, things that I still wrestle with in the poem. Like, you know, he has the devil eating Judas face first. And I was like, is that worse to be face first for eternity? Or, you know, like. And that's in the poem. Like, is that what's worse? Like, what is punishment, you know, and what is the kind of crux of belief? And those kind of things are all around us. And, you know, I pulled out the book, which I kind of put it in a drawer, set it aside, and then during Pandemic, I pulled it out and I was like, this is exactly how it feels right now. It feels really dark. And, you know, this is a journey through that.

[David Remnick]

Kevin, would you read us the section of Darkling that's titled Ledge?

[Kevin Young]

Yes. So this is from the poem based on Dante called Darkling. And this is from the Purgatory section. So this is Ledge. No use telling the dead what you've learned since they've learned it too. How to go on without you the mercy of mourning or moving the light that persists even if beauty is as beauty does. My mother says who is beautiful and speaks loud so she can be understood. Unlike poets who can't talk to save their lives, so they write. It's like a language loss can be learnt only by living there. What anchors us to this thirst and earth, its threats and thinnesses, its ways of waning and making the most of. Of worse and much worse, if not this light lifting up over the ridge.

[David Remnick]

Kevin, you are always in your poems. Not always, but when you want to be, even in the midst of real darkness and philosophical writing. Extremely funny. Beauty is as beauty does, my mother says, who is beautiful and speaks loud so she can be understood. Unlike poets who can't talk to save their lives, so they write.

[Kevin Young]

Bit true that, Juan. Humor is. I feel like there's a humor in Dante, you know, and certainly there's a humor in the blues or in the traditions I inherited. And I think, you know, my poetry became mine when I admitted that Sometimes I want to make you laugh in the midst.

[David Remnick]

Were you too solemn as a young poet?

[Kevin Young]

Oh, as a. You know, in juvenilia, yes. You know, and pulling your hair out, and I think it's a classic thing. You sit down to write, you pull out your quill, you know, you dip it in the ink.

[David Remnick]

Do you remember the first poem you ever wrote or the first attempts?

[Kevin Young]

Oh, yeah, of course.

[David Remnick]

What were they like?

[Kevin Young]

Still had them. They were moody and, you know, they were about the sea. But I was in Kansas where I went to high school, so, you know, they were kind of not about what was right around me. And then I think when I realized that I could write about, you know, how my parents told stories, how my family in Louisiana, you know, looked at the world. And the sound of that talk, which I've been trying to capture and write about all these years, you know, I think that was part of it. But also, you know, the way that they were philosophers and thought that African American tradition of the church, in my case, was really crucial to thinking about how do you seek justice? You know, how do you look for redemption in a world that can feel against you? It literally often is.

[David Remnick]

Now you're talking about history. And a large portion of this new book, Night Watch, is about Millie and Christine McCoy. It's a story. It seems like something from fiction, but these are historical figures. So give us a little orientation here. Who were the McCoys?

[Kevin Young]

Well, they were conjoined twins born into slavery, and then they were stolen and exhibited around the country, and their parents actually searched for them, hunted for them, and then finally retrieved them and then sued for their having being stolen. And it turns out one the suit, which is just kind of unprecedented. I was interested in the ways that they both were enslaved and then, you know, sort of forced to do a lot of things, including perform and be exhibited. Barnum was one of the places they ended up in Barnum's hands. And, you know, I've written about Barnum before, so I had always been interested in them. And, you know, the images of them are quite striking. And I think even in the images, which are probably early, you see them as young girls with this prepossessed stature, you know, and they're facing the camera as much as they can, you know, to get them both. I think that they were kind of a little bit looking askance at you, but I think there's something about that that's really powerful. And they also have sometimes lutes or instruments, and they were wonderful singers. And then upon their freedom, they sang and Toured Europe and were, you know, their harmonies were incredibly close, as you can imagine, and were reportedly just incredible. And then they bought the property of where they were enslaved and d. After the war. Yes, yes. Their family ended up back in the Carolinas in that same property. And they also refer to themselves as singular, often as I and sometimes as we. But they thought of themselves as one being in many instances.

[David Remnick]

What was your source material for this? Is there a famous biography?

[Kevin Young]

There's some biographies, but I actually tracked down, you know, me, I'm a bit of a collector person. So I tracked down a lot of their early pamphlets from the 19th century and late 1860s 70s.

[David Remnick]

This is now archives in various places.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, but I mean, I tracked them down for me. Like I want to like hold them and own the pamphlets because these are how they describe themselves, you know. And I wanted to get as close to that as possible to think about how they wrote themselves into existence. And it has their songs in there and various things. And some of that made their way into the poem.

[David Remnick]

Kevin, would you read an excerpt from the poem about them for us?

[Kevin Young]

Sure. This is from the Two headed nightingale, an octopus. The doctors self appointed and taught think us a circus Our eight limbs they always want Town to town to peer under to peak the ocean is deep for them we are specimen A woman only in word the Carolina twin the milk of a man, wine of a woman, two headed Nightingale sings, duets exquisitely. One trunk, one vertebral column. A marvelous being a female at 34 years of age, mother living. Each have sensitive of lower parts, but only sensitive of each upper part. I conversed with this these persons and found her quick and of pleasant manners. Both at times have identical dreams.

[David Remnick]

Kevin, I noticed that on the page you have this second part is in italics.

[Kevin Young]

Yes, so this part I just read is in italics. That's a doctor's kind of report. But these doctors were self appointed doctors and a little bit say, you know, I think disingenuous at best and abusive at worst, you know, and so I wanted some example of that. But this idea of their identical dreams I think kind of transcends even this doctor's, you know, because that's not something he can examine, that's something they have reported. And then there's this last part, if I may, where she speaks again. It is our mind. Doctors without schooling fail to mention they grant themselves degrees like freedom. Each of our hands a language eight limbed, two headed, we own many tongues.

[David Remnick]

I'm talking with poet Kevin Young. More in a moment. Foreign.

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[Asma Khalid]

So is the world.

[Narrator/Producer]

But what's happening in America isn't just.

[David Remnick]

A cause of global upheaval.

[Narrator/Producer]

It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

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[David Remnick]

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Kevin, you are, in addition to being a great individual artist, are also an institutionalist of a kind. You know, not only you're attached to the New Yorker, which of course, is the most important thing in the whole wide world, but you ran the Schomburg Library. You were running an extraordinary museum of African American history and culture in Washington. And now we're in a period, a political period, where president of the United States and the administration are taking an outsized interest in the way history is presented, talked about, and there's even talk about censorship. How do you feel about that, and how does it ease into your work at all, do you think?

[Kevin Young]

Well, history is all over my work, you know, And I think, especially when I was writing nonfiction books, I think there was a moment, you know, like it's almost easier in poetry to talk about history because you're bringing, I think, history to life. You're trying to illuminate it often with a voice, you know, which is sometimes what you lose in, you know, history book. No offense to my. Some of my favorite people who are historians, but I also think when I was writing these nonfiction books, and especially Bunk, a book about fakery in American life, I thought when I was starting to write Bunk, that no one would care about fakery in American life. Then it came out.

[David Remnick]

Now it's the dominant theme.

[Kevin Young]

Then it came out in 2017, I think it was. So. I hate to say that, for me, that things have gotten worse. I thought we were in that worst patch and that we'd be getting better. But to me, that kind of thing is a bit. How do we get past it?

[David Remnick]

Do you find that among your fellow writers, particularly poets, there's a sense of historical pressure now on them, even though they're not necessarily the dominant, loudest voices in the culture?

[Kevin Young]

I think so. I think there's that mix of it's unprecedented, which I always find overused, because I think in many ways it's precedented and how do we talk about that? But I also was here as the poetry editor during Pandemic, too, and to see how people were starting to wrestle with this century in the making kind of event was so powerful to see and to see how poets offered testimony. And putting together the anthology really showed me that.

[David Remnick]

You're talking about the recent centennial anthology.

[Kevin Young]

That you edited yeah, this New Yorker century from 1925 to 2025, exemplifies the ways that even in these early decades, you saw poets writing about it, Hughes being one of them, and riding through and thinking through these kinds of questions all along. And so to see that more, I think, dramatic and more direct, say in the 60s in Vietnam, but also I think, since then, in the ways that poets tried to address the issues of the day.

[David Remnick]

Are you finding the poems that you get as an editor? So you're getting enormous influx of poems, you and your colleague Hannah Eisenman, God knows how many poems come in each week. Are you finding the work is more political now or less political than it might have been a few years ago?

[Kevin Young]

I think since Pandemic, people have been wrestling with these questions, perhaps before even, but I see them wrestling more successfully now.

[David Remnick]

Why would that be?

[Kevin Young]

I think because some of the lessons of poetry's kind of, you know, poetry. For a long time, you would go to these conferences and people would say things like, can poetry be political? Like, is politics? You know, is there? I'd be like, what are you talking about, Mr. Dante?

[David Remnick]

That's a very political poem.

[Kevin Young]

Exactly. So, you know, it was a silly stance, I think, but it was one that was, I think, also about some of the things that have changed in American poetry, which has broadened and deepened. And I think some of that's reflected in the pages, a lot of that, but reflected in the sort of strategies. You couldn't, for instance, have an African American poetry book that didn't think about history, that didn't think about these questions of justice and, you know, loss and hope and all the things that I think poetry can be made up of.

[David Remnick]

Kevin Young, thanks so much.

[Kevin Young]

Thanks, David.

[David Remnick]

Kevin Young's new book is called Night Watch. He's also the poetry editor of the New Yorker and he hosts our poetry podcast every month. I'm David Remnick and that's our program for today. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.

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[Asma Khalid]

Hi, I'm Tyler Foggatt, a senior editor at the New Yorker and one of the hosts of the Political Scene podcast. A lot of people are justifiably freaked out right now, and I think that it's our job at the Political Scene to encourage people to stop and think about the particular news stories that are actually incredibly significant in this moment by having these really deep conversations with writers where we actually get into the weeds of what is going on right now and about the damage that is being done. It's not resistance in the activist sense, but I think it is resistance in the sense that we are resisting the feeling of being overwhelmed by chaos. Join me and my colleagues David Remnick, Evan Osnos, Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser on the Political Scene podcast from the New Yorker. New episodes drop three times a week, available wherever you get your podcasts.