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Night Watch Poems

From the award-winning poet at the height of his career, a book of personal and American experiences, both beautiful and troubling, touching on the generative cycle of loss and renewalFollowing on his exquisite Stones, Young''s new collection shapes stories of familial and familiar love, inspired in part by other lives. A central sequence, The Two-Headed Nightngale, is spoken by Millie-Christine McCoy, the famous conjoined African American Carolina Twins. Born into slavery and ill treatment as a freak sensation in 1851 and later free women, their alto and soprano voices harmonized, and Young''s poem explores their evolving selfhood and self-understanding: As one we sang, /we spake / She was the body / I the soul / Without one / Perishes the whole.In Darkling, a cycle of poems written in re