Praise for leadbelly

History unfolds revealing the overlooked blues-original Huddie Ledbetter in rising poet Tyehimba Jess’s first book, leadbelly. Jess chronologically tells the story of this Louisiana native, son of a cotton picker, through a series of persona poems. Fueled by everything hateful and destructive in southern bigotry, the first poem, “leadbelly’s lessons” sets the tone when twelve-year old Huddie, gifted with an artist’s voice through six strings, reveals: “it was there, alone./in the dark, darkness for me/that i first learned the ways/of pure white envy.” Divided by titles of Leadbelly’s recorded songs, the reader gets to “hear” the prophetic love of his mother; the long days of southern plantations and strength of his father; and the traversed controversial life of this innocent, turned artist, confessed prisoner, recording artist, blues man ’till death. There is an orality in Jess’s prose poems that lends itself directly to this project. A powerful intertwining of history and blues told through poetry. Jess has created a unique book with a distinct voice that any lover of blues or student of American history needs.
Booklist 

In its scope, this is an astonishing book, an unflinching chronicle of the life of a great musician and the times in which he lived. Highly recommended. 
Library Journal

Jess’ debut, an addictive amalgamation of approaches reminiscent, in its way, of Dos Passos’ 1919, tells the story of Huddie William Ledbetter and his passage to becoming the blues legend, Leadbelly. Told through many voices, from his devoted wife Martha to folklorist John Lomax and his quest to “stake his claim on the breath of each Black / willing to open his mouth and spit out / southern legend’s soiled roots,” the collection proceeds by call and response, each negation an affirmation of something else, like trading “dry psalms...for cool cigar smoke.” In the telling of one life, a society is exposed—racist, well-meaning, violent, forgiving. And yet while the classic binaries—black and white, man and woman, powerful and powerless—play their part, the collection’s strength lies in its contradictory forms; from biography to lyric to hard-driving prose poem, boast to song, all are soaked in the rhythm and dialect of Southern blues and the demands of honoring one’s talent. Readers will notice these poems teach us how to read them, but more so, these poems demand performance, recalling that space beyond the page: the stage. Jess has crafted this collection in the logic of its subject, that is, rhythm and performance, proving that a good poem—slam or not—neither needs nor abandons its poet once on the page.
Publishers Weekly

Tyehimba Jess, like the subject of his National Poetry Series-winning debut, coaxes an astonishingly rich world from the wood and steel scraps of the life he finds before him. Employing an impressive variety of voices and forms, he plays all twelve strings strapped to the box, all the bars of the jails Huddie Ledbetter lived within: “sit down and let me tell you mama, / ’bout the worry iron wrought on a man.”
David Daniel, Ploughshares

Jess’s leadbelly stands at the crossroads of black literary art and musicality. Better yet, Jess’s work is a crossroad of black literary art and musicality. He remixes legend and history. His mission of transmitting the saga of Leadbelly to the tunes of distinct African American styles and communicative forms inspires my belief that Jess’s work displays a deep sense of cool black consciousness, especially in regard to musicality. He works with an expressive tradition that blends sensibilities of field holler, spiritual encodings, gospel moan and groan, work song cadence, blue notes, and jook joint jazz. Simply put, for Tyehimba Jess, music is serious possibility.
Howard Rambsy II, Sou’wester, Vol. 34, No. 1

This conceptual experience, the book as a world and less of a private place of the mind, is what I think makes this book ground-breaking. I believe it sheds new light onto the often shady, rigid, and elitist discourse of the current literary machine.
Calista Tarnauskas, Basement Medicine