Jelly Roll

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 Youngs voice is pure American: joyous in its individualism and singing of the self at its strongest.