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Download Jelly Roll: A Blues ePub

by Kevin Young

ISBN 0375414606
ISBN13 978-0375414602
Language English
Author Kevin Young
Publisher Knopf; 1 edition (January 14, 2003)
Pages 208
Formats mobi lrf doc lit
Category Fiction
Subcategory Poetry
Size ePub 1262 kb
Size Fb2 1498 kb
Rating: 4.1
Votes: 619

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.

Significantly, on the title page, under "Jelly Roll " is written "composed and arranged by Kevin Young," as if this were a book of musical compositions.

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.

Jelly roll : a blues. In a collection of poetry inspired by the rhythms of the blues, the poet blends traditional lyric diction with African American idiom to create such verses as "Stride Piano," Gutbucket," and "Can-Can. African Americans, Blues (Music).

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. See all books by Kevin Young.

Часто встречающиеся слова и выражения. His second book of poems, To Repel Ghosts, a double album based on the work of the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, was a finalist for the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets.

Jelly Roll: A Blues is a 2003 poetry collection by Kevin Young. The 208-page book-Young's third-is named for jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton and develops a blues-based collection of love poems, written predominantly in two-line stanzas. In 2003, it was a National Book Award finalist.

Kevin Young, in his book of poetry, Jelly Roll: A Blues taps right into and dishes up the hypnotic lyrical rhythms of performers from the Mississippi and Louisiana Deltas. Jelly Roll not only captures Blues rhythms, but he instils the essence of the Blues. He also reconnects the branches of Ragtime, Dixieland, Jazz, and Calypso back to their original musical family tree. These interludes almost ache with the symmetry of his Blues. Kevin Young understands the Blues in a way that is fettered to the objects of his devotion that he can’t seem to hold onto.

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Talk about Jelly Roll: A Blues

Coidor

I am a new found Kevin Young fan, but I now know that I will be one for life. I discovered Jelly Roll at my college's library after I was initially seeking another one of Young's novels. I stumbled upon this and noticed the vibrant hardcover and couldn't resist looking through it and then checking it out. I read a good 90% of this book before buying my own copy. I have yet to finish it with school work piling up, but I am certain that I will finish it before Christmas and will be soon seeking another one of Young's books. There is something addictive about his style of poetry than makes you want to continue on for as long as you can until you have to pull yourself away in order to move on with the day. I also loved the theme that was present in this book, even with minimal words, you can still feel the passion behind them. I hope to meet Young one day until then I hope to get my hands on more of his work.

Phallozs Dwarfs

I'm so glad I invested in this collection that I studied for a writing exercise in college. Kevin Young had an event at 92Y and I got his autograph :)

Mikale

It's always interesting to see one art "translated" by another art. In these poems KY goes back into time then hands us a scooped up array from a past master.

Nahelm

central to these poems is how they are imbued with the blues even when they’re entitled PLAINSONG, RAMBLE or JUBILEE. these poems are smarter than they look with their truncated couplets, ragged and terse, lyrical verses which leave a humming in your head.

and young keeps them coming, like the old comedians of one liners, henny youngman, jimmy durante, who had ‘a million of em,’ and nipsy russell, who ishmael reed credited with developing his own poetry form.

and like the blues, these poems express the loss of some woman’s love. as billy eckstine used to sing the lyrics by fatha hines’: jelly jelly jelly, jelly stays on my mind.

with word reversals, young pays homage to berryman and his transformative grammar; broken words at the end of the line call to mind cummings; and occasionally young’s tone touches the voice from ishmael reed’s first collections of blues poems.

from the book, a couple of poems at selected at random:

VESPERS

Along this strange shore
I am alone with only

the cruelty of song—
night’s chant is

around us, or me—
the hum of her

gone. Alone even
God is no good—

no hymn can take her
off my hands, pressed, kneel-

ed here in front
of this altar television—

flickering—finally
even sleep has left

me stranded, unbottled,
flotsam swaying wind.

GUTBUCKET

I want, like
water, you—

something wet
gainst the back

of my throat. Carry
me out

reel me in
I been down

this well too long--

i bought this book at young’s reading at the sunken garden here in connecticut, inscribed by the author with his scrawl:
For Case Quarter, Peace!

Whiteflame

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.

Duktilar

The poetry of Kevin Young in "Jelly Roll: A Blues" is inextricably, and purposefully, linked with the Blues music tradition. Significantly, on the title page, under "Jelly Roll [A Blues]" is written "composed and arranged by Kevin Young," as if this were a book of musical compositions. From the old-school gramophone on the cover to the dozens of music themed poem titles, Young, as blatantly as he can, stamps his collection with the label of "Blues Poetry", encouraging readers to appreciate the musicality of his verse and placing his work in the tradition of black Blues Poets.

While many of Young's poems exhibit a flare for fresh language and a playful musicality, as a whole, "Jelly Roll [A Blues]" feels monotonous. Most of Jelly Roll's poems are about sex or love, and almost every one of them follows the same repetitive two-line stanza form. After the first twenty pages or so of this enormous, one hundred ninety page book, I found myself wondering, with each new poem, if I had already read one exactly like it a few pages ago.

There are moments throughout the book--words, images, sounds--that are brief bursts of beautiful or interesting. If the collection was cut to about one third or one fourth of its current size, then perhaps those moments would not be drowned out by the sense of monotony and repetition that the two-line form creates.

By calling so much attention to the genre of his poems, he boldly invites comparison between himself and early Blues Poets such as Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown. However, his work, at this point, does not live up to his hype.

Adrietius

I read this book in one sitting on an airplane and I was mesmerized. I kept looking to my right to see if the woman next to me was peeking over my shoulder. The poems were so good I thought she should have been able to feel it and want to read, too.

Please stop. To pass these couplets off as poems, as blues even! Read my lips: UGH! Jelly Roll, you ain't so good and if that's all the brothers have got, we in serious trouble. Out.

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