{"product_id":"jelly-roll-a-blues-9780375709890","title":"Jelly Roll: A Blues","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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSexy 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKevin Young's first book, \u003ci\u003eMost Way Home\u003c\/i\u003e, was selected for the National Poetry Series and won the Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares. His second book of poems, \u003ci\u003eTo Repel Ghosts\u003c\/i\u003e, 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. Young's poetry and essays have appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Paris Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Kenyon Review\u003c\/i\u003e, and\u003ci\u003e Callaloo\u003c\/i\u003e. He is editor of the anthology \u003ci\u003eGiant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers \u003c\/i\u003eand the forthcoming Everyman's Library Pocket Poet anthology \u003ci\u003eBlues Poems\u003c\/i\u003e. A former Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, Young is currently Ruth Lilly Professor of Poetry at Indiana University.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51253953167634,"sku":"9780375709890","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_3dd72b56-1c7d-4735-bd0f-8efbaf38887b.jpg?v=1746300193","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/jelly-roll-a-blues-9780375709890","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}