At our peril, we ignore the fact that black vernacular, like the blues, both has a form and performs... For just as there would be no American music without black folks, there would be very little of our American language.
Kevin YoungRead
The willed recovery of what's been lost - often forcibly, I suppose - is what keeps me going. It is this reason I found myself a poet and a collector and now a curator: to save what we didn't even know needed saving.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses the idea of actively seeking to recover and preserve lost aspects of life, particularly through poetry and curation.
Kevin Young emphasizes the importance of recovering lost elements of culture, memory, and identity. He highlights how this act of reclamation motivates his work as a poet and curator, showcasing a commitment to preserving what is often overlooked or forgotten, demonstrating that the act of saving stories and artifacts can be profoundly impactful.
Themes
RecoveryPreservationArtPoetryMemory
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used to inspire writers to focus on preserving stories through their art.
More from Kevin Young
All quotes →Race is the true protagonist of the American novel. Our most popular classic fictions have known this, from 'Moby Dick' to 'Beloved;' all these books take on race or talk it out, often in other forms; they are less 'horror stories for boys' than ghost stories from a haunted conscience.
Kevin YoungRead
There's something about the kind of time travel that a poem can provide. It can take you to somewhere else - a culture far from you, a language far from you, but suddenly you're there. You're that person, seeing with that person's eyes. I think that's really tremendous. Even things like cinema or more traditional history can't quite do that.
Kevin YoungRead
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