New Yorker magazine poetry editor Kevin Young has called poetry “the most efficient mode of time travel.” In his new volume of poems “Night Watch,” Young, a literary hyphenate who edits, writes and teaches, takes readers on a journey of loss and re-emergence. From his cycle of poems about a conjoined pair of twins born into slavery and kidnapped to a carnival freak show to his meditations on grief set to the phases of the moon, Young’s spare and incisive language provides the reader passage through history and memory. We talk to Young about his collection and what it means to be a poet today.

Guests:

Kevin Young, poet and author; poetry editor, The New Yorker; former director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture

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