All The Beauty - by Jay Kidd (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

All The Beauty could almost be subtitled A Memoir in Verse for it explores, shares, and illuminates the life of the poet, a poet who is writing in midlife, reflecting on how he has lived and what he has lived through. Jay Kidd's poems portray the emotional impact of an unsettled childhood, a young adulthood overtaken by an epidemic and the impact of having survived it, the satisfaction of work, and most importantly the solace of love. Through it all, these poems hold on to the possibility of hope in their compelling quest for beauty, the beauty borne of emotional honesty and the beauty that can be found in the world around us.

Review Quotes

Jay Kidd's chapbook pays delicate attention to life's joys and griefs. After reading All The Beauty, I need to sit quietly to allow these poems a little time settle within. The space between love and sadness is where they reside. Kidd writes in The Dusk Effect that "sorrow emerges from the gloaming like a violet/for me to touch, hold close and tend to." I am grateful for the 'tending' and ultimately, the joy these poems provide.

-Kim Farrar, author of The Familiar and The Brief Clear (Finishing Line Press 2011 and 2015)

Jay Kidd's poems, steeped in the quotidian, are witty and knowing and laced with a guarded humor. There is sorrow in these intelligent lines as well, grief and testimony, but the city and the country, where past is always present, slyly ambush both poet and reader with unexpected joy.

-Lesley Dormen, author of The Best Place to Be: A novel in stories.

Migraines, parental abandonment, the terror and isolation of AIDS, the sweet intricacies of modern marriage, there's a good deal of human pain in these poems, which is perhaps why its title, All The Beauty, is so richly earned and perfectly right. The beauty found here is that of compassion and wisdom and, yes, that special music made only in the heart. This first book feels ancient in its scale and appeal, in its honesty and candor. We are eavesdropping on a conversation the poet is having with himself, a conversation as intimate as it is universal. Beauty, indeed.

-Philip Schultz