Book Cover Image of Jelly Roll: A Blues by Kevin Young

Jelly Roll: A Blues
by Kevin Young

Publication Date: Jan 14, 2003
List Price: $23.00
Format: Hardcover, 208 pages
Classification: Poetry
ISBN13: 9780375414602
Imprint: Knopf
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Parent Company: Bertelsmann

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Hardcover Description:

In this jaunty and intimate collection, Kevin Young invents a language as shimmying and comic, as low-down and high-hearted, as the music from which he draws inspiration. With titles such as “Stride Piano,” “Gutbucket,” and “Can-Can,” these poems have the sharp completeness of vocalized songs and follow a classic blues trajectory: praising and professing undying devotion (“To watch you walk / cross the room in your black / corduroys is to see / civilization start”), only to end up lamenting the loss of love (“No use driving / like rain, past / where you at”). As Young conquers the sorrow left on his doorstep, the poems broaden to embrace not just the wisdom that comes with heartbreak but the bittersweet wonder of triumphing over adversity at all.

Sexy and tart, playfully blending an African American idiom with traditional lyric diction, Young’s voice is pure American: joyous in its individualism and singing of the self at its strongest.



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