Jelly Roll by Kevin Young

Jelly Roll Reviews

• 
  Lindsey

  Favorites:
  "Ragtime," "Stride Piano," "Errata," "Rhapsody," "Lyre," "Evensong," "Interlude," "Late Blues," "Elegy, Niagra Falls"
  
  Excellent use of enjambment/line breaks; wonderful richness of "simple" language, beautiful arc. Best book of poetry I've read in a while.
• 
  John Madera

  Witty, wistful, elegiac are among the hues of Kevin Young's blues, Jelly Roll's lyricism, incisiveness, and humor reminiscent of poems by Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Pablo Neruda, its oft-staccato and fragmentary lines deftly and evocatively fusing the "formal" and "colloquial," the result less code-switching than code-breaking. Highly recommended.
• 
  René

  I loved this. Great collection of poems that tell the story of a relationship, using music--especially American music forms--to trace the emotional arc of the relationship and tie all the poems together. The language of the poems is musical, the voice decidedly American, often specifically African American. Some of the poems also hark of Emily Dickinson, in their use of long interruptive dashes and short but intensely thoughtful and emotional phrases. The early poems in the collection tend to be quicker and more playful, lighter in their point of view and approach to life and love. More carefree, humorous, amorous. By the middle the poems become more intense and weighty, the outlook more serious and needing, yet with remarkable little change to their form. It looks like some other readers on here missed some of the humor of the early poems by the collection's end--but I didn't. I didn't find the humor lacking at the end, just darker and more subtle to catch. The collection essentially tracks the poet-speaker's changes and emotional growth, for better or for worse, and takes us on a journey not unlike the kind a great live musical performance or even album should. This is a collection that seems to understand that a group of poems should have the same cathartic and healing or renewing effects that we usually only credit to music and movies in our culture. This collection is an affirmation of the music, emotion, and possibility in American poetry and everyday speech. Can't wait to read more from Kevin Young.
• 
  Laila

  This was a really fun book of poetry to read... playful and musical and earthy and sexy. I need to read more by Kevin Young.
• 
  Lisa Hase-Jackson

  Kevin Young and The Blues Tradition
  
  Kevin Young is the author and editor of seven collections of poetry (with an eighth on the way), winner of the Zacharis First Book (Poets.org) and other awards, and admired professor of poetry at Emory University. In reading Young and considering his words closely, even those which are perhaps tinged with a fair measure of hubris, I step out of the vacuum of my own literary preferences to quickly become aware of how many Americans are little interested in poetry or concerns of black Americans. How, despite the checkered progress of the Civil Rights movement (one step forward, two steps back), many Americans still apparently fear the humanization of non-whites. Even The Blues, which Young calls his book Jelly Roll, is a lyric form which whites long ago tried to separate from black tradition to make their own. But Young reclaims and extends The Blues in Jelly Roll, sometimes stretching them thin to both exploit and upset their inherent repetition, ultimately giving voice to emotions that are otherwise inaccessible to language.
  
  Jelly Roll is prefaced by lyrics from King of the Delta Blues Singers, Robert Johnson. These lyrics, which lament “I love my baby / But my baby don’t love me,” (1-2) not only place this collection solidly in the Blues tradition but also informs the reader of the subject matter: love, loss, and the road that connects the two. Many poem titles extend the Blues motif by borrowing terms related to music such as “Etude,” “Aubade,” “Cantata,” “Blues,” “Doo Wop,” “Vespers,” and “Funk”. Other poem titles refer to dance moves or attitudes that are associated with the Blues, such as “Shimmy, Zoot,” “Can Can,” “Gut Bucket,” “Black Bottom,” “Boogie-Woogie,” or “Foxtrot.” The Blues are inextricably connected to romantic love and fooling around and nearly all poem titles can be interpreted to suggest more than one meaning, acting as double entendres in many cases.
  The collection is arranged loosely in accordance with the stages of love: desire to be in love, falling in love, being transfixed by love, being fooled by love, losing love, and returning to self. The first section focuses on desire and transfixion and provides observations from one who, though wanting a relationship, is nonetheless bereft of one. The danger, urgency and chaos of early love is illustrated in the poem “Siren” in which the speaker exclaims, “I mean, darling, / to be an ABC / extinguisher, kept / handy, kitchened, a six alarm / APB—the loom / of the trucks / hydrants in bloom” (7-11). Passion has just such an effect on a person’s system, that of chaos and heat combined with a sense of emergency. If only a person affected by the miasma of love could call the fire department to extinguish uncontrollable flames, or an ambulance to resuscitate a love sick man to sanity.
  Other poems in the first section are from the perspective of one who has invited love into his life and is in the early stages of its addictive insanity. These poems convey an awareness of the danger and pain involved in falling in love though the experience is invited just the same. This is exemplified as a change of appetite in “Jitterbug” wherein the speaker exclaims that “Today nothing / sounds good / to eat – not ribs -- / not veggie / burgers ….I… / only want to chew / your fingers” (1-5 & 11-12). “Jitterbug” epitomizes the stomach-queasy early stages of infatuation when all thoughts and feelings focus expressly on the object of one’s passion.
  
  “Errata” is notable because it of its playful use of form which expresses a disenchantment with love that will grow more evident in the second section of Jelly Roll. The term errata refers to a list of errors, and who among us does not keep score in a relationship. But here “Errata” is more than just a list; it is a carefully crafted poem that illustrates the period in a relationship when the concerned parties are not entirely sure if they are going commit or just break it off. The beginning lines “Baby, give me just, / one more hiss” (1-2) do not at first reveal what the poet is up to. The careful choice of replacing the “k” with an “h” for “hiss” is not at first understood to be a replacement, may even be mistaken for a typo, and actually reveals a changed attitude toward the lover. By the time the reader gets to the third stanza “I want to cold you / in my harms” (5-6), it is evident that the poet’s switching of consonants is deliberate and intended to create a certain effect; one of displacement that reveals a truth about the relationship that the speaker may not yet be willing to admit consciously – sort of like a poetic Freudian slip.
  
  Section two of Jelly Roll is about being played the fool by and loosing love and is prefaced with a poignant quote from Gwendolyn Brooks: “You are the beautiful half / Of a golden hurt” (1-2), words that suggests a troubled, perhaps even dysfunctional relationship and set the stage for poems which range from disillusioned to hopeful. Consider the first poem in section two, titled “Break,” which possesses a tone contrary to the turgid passion and ramped up desire of several poems in the first section. In the beginning lines of “Break,” the speaker announces “I’m about to waltz / on outta here—your hands / cannot stop me / nor your noisy / nudity” (1-5), which contrasts significantly to the imagery of the poems, like “Mic Check” from the first section, wherein the speaker proclaims he wakes “early & crave[s] / to call you & whisper / dirty ditties / into your ear” (2-5). Another example of shifting imagery and tone in the second section can be found in the first part of the “Cantata” series where love is compared to catching catfish:
  the stinging
  struggling in one hand
  in the other the reel
  the line, to which it and I
  are tied (13-17)
  
  which describes being attached to something both irritating and exciting; being inextricably tangled in something desired and not all together pleasantly surprising. The rest of the poems in the “Cantata” series make additional observations about the ebb and flow of love and the growing separation that occurs as a relationship evolves. This motif is especially evident in “Chorus” section, where the speaker describes his lover as “walking / away like being / pulled” (1-3) and in “Duet,” “this town is twos – / all split—a blues” (1-2), both lamenting the inevitable return to earth amid the vestiges of first love and becoming aware of the separateness of selves.
  
  The third and final section of the Jelly Roll is prefaced with poet Jay Wright’s “I am at the gate of a lost life; / I am at the door of my own harmony” (1-2) which suggest the end of one way of life and the beginning of another. In this section the revelation of difficult acceptance and the poet’s rediscovery of self manifests in the first poem, “Envoy,” which begins with “I quit. Resigned / from your company” (1-2) and ends with “now to get down / to brass, to this / bidness—of breathing—“ (9-11). In “Honky Tonk” the speaker acknowledges that “At least / I do not need / a comb / to run you out / my system” (1-5) and in “Saxophone Solo” “I am singing / to myself again” (4-5). It is worth mentioning that the speaker’s return to self in the third section of the collection is repeatedly equated with breath or voice, as in the previously mentioned “Saxophone Solo” as well as in “Instrumental,” where he writes “I have put down words in order / to again breath” (1-2) or in the final stanza of “Vows,” which reads “Through woods echoes / my widowed voice” (7-8). Section three also touches on the theme of mortality, which, of course, exists in nearly all poetry to some degree. It is more obvious, however, in the poems “Litany” and the concluding “Elegy, Niagra Falls,” both of which epitomize ultimate acceptance of self as represented by the acceptance of one’s own mortality.
  
  The poetic form of the Blues of course stems from the African American oral tradition (poets.org) and is most recognizable in its traditional format in which “a statement is made in the first line, a variation is given in the second line, and an ironic alternative is declared in the third line” (poets.org). Young uses this traditional form most effectively in such poems as “Blues” and “Disaster Movie Them e Music,” though most of the poems in Jelly Roll handle the tropes of struggle, despair, desire and passion without forcing them into rigid forms. Rather, his poems breathe through expanded lines and common language and colloquial words and phrases. And when uncommon or foreign languages appear, they do not call undue attention to themselves or their author’s education. Jelly Roll has found a home among the Blues tradition but will, hopefully, not be the last word.
   
  (In the style of Langston Hughes)
  
  High Desert Blues
  
  
  Nights on the high dessert
  sure get dark and cold
  Yes, nights on the high dessert
  sure get dark and cold
  I say, my man done gone to New York city
  and I got nothing but my pillow
  to hold.
  
  Sand’s been blowing around the mesa
  and up into this town.
  I said, sand’s been a blowing out on the mesa
  and right up into town
  My man’s still far away from home,
  and I’m still feeling down.
  
  The sun is high and fire-y white, it’s
  strong and hot today
  The sun sure is high and fire-y white up there –
  shining oh so strong and hot today
  Since my man don’t come around no more –
  guess I’ll just move away.
   
  (In response to Kevin Young’s “Disaster Movie Theme Music”)
  
  What you Say?
  
  
  You standin’ at my front door
  Makin’ my dogs bark all loud –
  
  knocking at MY front door
  causing my old dogs to bark all loud—
  
  guess you didn’t get my mama’s message
  that you no longer allowed!
• 
  Kim

  If you love music and poetry - you will really enjoy this one.
• 
  Jack Heller

  This is the second book of poetry I've read by Kevin Young, the first being BROWN. This collection focuses on the trajectory of a relationship, more on its breaking up and transformations than on its establishment. Most of the poem titles come from musical terminology, and while I am familiar with many of the terms, I'm not always picking up on their connections to the text of the poems. No matter. I enjoy the collection and can recommend it to readers of poetry . . . even if I slightly prefer BROWN.
• 
  Grace

  “hands I seek - zombied -
  The bayou
  
  of my blood - standing
  water and ‘squitoes.”
  
  I love Young’s poetry, but until I encountered this 189 page book of poetry around the same theme that I wondered why books of poems aren’t longer. I’ll have to think more on it, because there is something to be said for the monotony of romantic loss, but this is definitely a book to pick up and put down over the course of a month or so.
• 
  Nick Jordan

  The dust jacket says “jaunty and intimate,” which is not as direct as “A lot of these are about sex.” Some truly standout poems (including many of those “intimate” ones), but the collection as a whole is not as thoroughly amazing as his *Dear Darkness.*
• 
  Ambrose Miles

  Wonderful, a blues song every poem.
• 
  Theelmo26

  
  I like this book because it contains things that go according to the theme and it is also very accurate
• 
  Michael Dunn

  Enjoyed this book of poetry. The rhythm and themes resonated with me. Open, vulnerable and insightful at times.
• 
  Joel Robert

  3.5
• 
  Cassandra

  Indifferent
• 
  Christine Grant

  music is a world within itself
• 
  Steven

  Using a variety of rhythmic song forms, from “Cheer” (22) to “Ditty” (15) or “Country (& Western)” (79) to “Disaster Movie Theme Music” (84), Kevin Young’s third collection of poetry is an inspiring look at the intersection of music and poetry. The poems mostly deal with love and relationships, as seen through the shaded lens of an aged blues singer. But Young is a deft observer of current culture and he balances the melodramatic tone of his blues with humorous images and motifs from popular music and film, making a heart “up & [leave] its chest” like “a tech-/nicolor cartoon” (81) or asking an ex-lover for “a benefit/concert” (94) to feed a broken heart. This ever-expanding web of vocabulary is sometimes daunting and the reader feels a little lost if not versed in musical terms, but this is not a negative; in fact, the poems are so moving, it makes you want to find the singers and songs that inspired Young. His poetry is a testimony to the power of the rhythm in a few words or a well-metered line, and although there were a few drawbacks to his approach, overall there was much to enjoy from this relatively young poet.
• 
  Bethany

  This was absolutely fantastic. I loved his form; his words very very sparse, there were absolutely no extraneous or unnecessary filler words. I loved the shortness of the lines in most of his poems. I just think the form and style he uses is really great. That alone would make his poetry absolutely gorgeous.
  
  What makes it even more gorgeous is the way he plays with sound. There are poems where the words or phrases don't really connect much to each other, but that doesn't matter because they sound so beautiful. To me, this is what poetry truly should be. There are definite points where he plays with a bluesy sort of African-American dialect, which I just found so wonderful-sounding when said out loud.
  
  The fact is that Kevin Young manages to say volumes with very, very few words. And because his complex, poetic devices are so rare, such as metaphor, when he does use them, they are extremely powerful. This is definitely a poet I would read again, and a poetry volume I will pick up again.
• 
  Diann Blakely

  *Jelly Roll: A Blues* (Knopf), Kevin Young's third book, combines street talk and haiku, Africa and Georgia snow, decrescendos and dream talk. The free verse poems here have a jazzy, improvised feel; they're nonmetrical but rhythmically accomplished and highly syncopated. Perhaps the most dazzling, if seemingly minor, aspect of *Jelly Roll* is the titles, which signify Young's knowlede of music and his willingness to play with traditions in order to create a style entirely his own. "Busing," "Rock," "Interlude," "Roll," "Blackbottom," "Country (A Western)" and "Disaster Movie Theme Music" comprise a brief list. The opening section of this last poem gives some idea of Young's wit and style. "Winding back roads / I believe in you // Winding back muddy roads / I say I believe in you // Wheels got stuck baby / What good's belief do."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  (originally published in the *Nashville Scene* / Village Voice Media)
• 
  Mark Desrosiers

  I'm a sucker for that spare semi-autistic voice that Emily Dickinson invented well nigh 150 years ago, and Kevin Young's variation of it (inflected with Langston Hughes blues rhythms and John Berryman backwards grammar) is fun (!) and unique. These are not "difficult" poems by any means, but they are blunt, unrelenting, and re-readable (especially the lust poems at the beginning).
  
  I wish his sense of humor didn't depart him so thoroughly in the death poems at the end, and the tedious "Sleepwalking Psalms" live up to their name (proving that he shouldn't ever be allowed near a pentameter). But on the whole this is fun stuff, even if the overall trajectory (lust--> anger --> bitterness --> death) is a total bum trip. That's the thing, Kevin: blues is supposed to cure you of the blues, not give you the blues.
• 
  Taryn

  Haven't read a book of poetry in a while and this was a pleasant surprise--found it by accident among the new releases at the library. His titles are all music-related--like "ragtime" and "jitterbug," "dirge" and "muzak"--so it was the theme that pulled me in, but the contents are surprising and sexy. I haven't enjoyed a new writer this much in a long time; definitely worth seeking out his first two books.
• 
  Matt

  
  Combining two things I love-- the blues and poetry-- ably, sensitively, and with due reverence.
  
  This started off a long time reading of Young's work, which is really acclaimed and esteemed for a reason, and I even wiggled my way into meeting him once. He was very polite as I stammered my stupid questions.
• 
  Renee Jaspers

  I absolutely hated this! It is was monotonous and boring. He loudly places himself in the "blues" poetry tradition (made famous by Langston Hues & Sterling Brown. He is young (as his name implies), but arrogant. It made me feel like this got published because it would sell well, versus actually being quality work. However, everyone has different tastes in poetry, so I'm sure some people loved it.
• 
  Shayla

  I'll admit, I don't read poetry often, so I liked this book, but I didn't LOVE it. I'm also not a big fan of blues and there is a blues musicality to these poems. There were a few that stuck out for me...ETUDE, MIC CHECK, PASTORALE, and ELEGY, NIAGARA FALLS. I do plan to check out his other books.
• 
  Melissa

  Kevin Young is one of the best poets I have ever read. You read the words on the pages with your eyes but they enter your head as music (dirty, gritty, blues). If I could I would wrap myself in his words and fall asleep to the rhythms that they create.
• 
  Elyse

  smart, fun poetry
• 
  Devin A.

  i really like poem books by famous worldwide authors. great authors. if you read this book
  you will be amazed
  Devin
  Anglada 6/2/2009