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.