Unalone

"Make a fence, said the rabbis, around the Torah," reads the first line of Jessica Jacobs' unalone. By the end of this opening poem, however, Jacobs has defined her engagement with religious texts as an act of devotion to living fully in the world's complexity: "Here, love, is fruit with the sun still inside it. Let me // thumb the juice from your chin. Let us honor what we love / by taking it in." Structured around the twelve parshiyot (portions) of Genesis, the trajectory of unalone parallels immersion in Jewish teachings with the contemporary world. Whether conversing with the sacred texts she reads or writing from her subjects' perspectives, Jacobs navigates an abundance of experiences: growing up queer, embracing one's sexuality, reversing roles as the adult child of aging parents, wrestling with religious history and the imposed roles of womanhood, exploring how the past foreshadows our current climate crisis, and revisiting the blush of new love while cataloging the profound, though more familiar, joys of a long relationship.

Deeply personal and yet universal in its truths, unalone draws on the Book of Genesis as a living document whose stories, wisdom, and ethical knots can engage us more fully with our own lives -- whatever your religious tradition or spiritual beliefs. In this stunning and ambitious book, Jacobs reminds us that all poetry serves as a kind of prayer - a recognition of beauty, a spoken bid for connection, a yearning toward an understanding that might better guide us through our days. When you "dive / from the twin heights of your eyes," "that tiny pool below" isn't God. "Well, not exactly," Jacobs comforts us. "It's you. One breath deeper than you've / ever been, one breath closer to the heeded, heedful world."

Author: Jessica Jacobs
Publisher: Four Way Books
Published: 03/15/2024
Pages: 210
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.79lbs
Size: 9.01h x 6.12w x 0.30d
ISBN: 9781954245822


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 07/12/2024 pg. 1

About the Author

Jessica Jacobs is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You're Going (Four Way Books, 2019), one of Library Journal's Best Poetry Books of the Year, winner of the Devil's Kitchen and Goldie Awards, and a finalist for the Brockman-Campbell, American Fiction, and Julie Suk Book Awards; and Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press, 2015), a biography-in-poems of Georgia O'Keeffe, winner of the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; and is the co-author of Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books/Penguin RandomHouse, 2020). She is the founder and executive director of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry.