“Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels’’
by Kevin Young (Knopf)
A good epic poem is hard to come by these days, and it’s not just because of our kitten-like attention spans that there aren’t more of them out there. The real challenge awaiting any would-be contemporary American epic poet is the impossible multiplicity of our history - how to tell our story without leaving someone out. Twenty years in the making, Kevin Young’s “Ardency,’’ a sprawling choral retelling of the 1839 uprising aboard the slave ship Amistad and the aftermath for its captives, rises fearlessly to the challenge of historical poetry, in both the breadth of its scope and the intimacy of its materials. Young transforms archived letters, artifacts, and oral accounts into a carefully composed clamor of voices, stolen through history into some of the year’s keenest lines. With stunning concision and detailed strokes, Young’s vision of American liberty is ongoing, all-encompassing, and utterly engrossing: “All we want is make us free.’’
