Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Jelly Roll: A Blues

Jelly Roll: A Blues

Young, Kevin

Paperback

Blues & SoulGeneral Poetry

ISBN10: 0375709894
ISBN13: 9780375709890
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: Feb 1 2005
Pages: 208
Weight: 0.61
Height: 0.60 Width: 6.14 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
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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General Poetry

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