With respect to Jelly Roll, critics have almost universally lauded Young's ability to absorb the reader in the rhythmic flow of his writing. In the Hudson Review, Mark Jarman declares, “Young makes a supple, changeable music out of the marriage of dialect and standard English.” Jarman presents a sample of Young's verse and then adds, “You can hear the sound of this voice alive on the vivid page. That's poetry.” In classifying the verse in Jelly Roll as among the best poetry of 2003 in Library Journal, Barbara Hoffert notes, “Young struts his stuff with verve, tossing us off-kilter lines with a sort of insouciant melancholy. He'll get under your skin.” In Black Issues Book Review, Dike Okoro observes, “The jazzy swagger and the quirky syntax (and the omnipresent long dash) marry to produce a dizzying flow.”

Still, some reviewers have found Young's linguistic presentation disagreeable. In...