The Sisters: New and Selected Poems

by Josephine Jacobsen

Book by Jacobsen, Josephine

Genres: Poetry

132 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1980

About the author

Josephine Jacobsen was an American poet, short story writer, and critic.

Born in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, she moved with her family to New York at a young age. When she was fourteen, she moved to Maryland where she lived for the rest of her life. Jacobsen served as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress from 1971 to 1973 and as honorary consultant in American letters from 1973 to 1979. She served as member of both the literature panel for the National Endowment of the Arts and of the poetry committee of Folger Library.

Reviews

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure if I've ever had LESS of a reaction to a collection of poetry. These poems absolutely did not speak to me, in any way. The only poem that will possibly stay with me is The Gondolas:

The Gondolas
All night the gondolas knock
knock softly lightly like a hand
secure in its message. Under the windows, down
in the dark
the black gondolas knock softly.

Noon hushes the hand.
Pigeons flung into the sun they darken
glitter, break into fragments, fall
to fold their flight and stepping, stop;
the lion stares, all stars and wings, but stands;
the sumptuous banners move out and up
in the wind's hand;
flowing palazzi's peaks
shimmer and stream, their colors melt and flow
the bridges arching down melt under prows
the clouds confuse them as the bells
melt all their metal in the summer air.

At night the echoes echo echoes:
now you hear
the slight slap, ageless,
below sealed doors,
the soft quasi-silent slap
of water on the dank green sides of stone,
on the soft brilliant moss of footless steps.
Down black still ways palazzi go, deeper
than last night, into sleep.

The lights' cold broken flash
catches an orange peel, a stir of dark:
the soft slight slap jostles the gondolas
the black long empty gondolas
stir, knocking slightly
with a light hollow knocking
like a confident hand.

[Mills College Library]

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