A Jab of Deep Urgency

by E. Kristin Anderson

A JAB OF DEEP URGENCY is a collection of 30 poems crafted during Found Poetry Review’s Pulitzer Remix project in 2013. Mined from the text of Jennifer Egan’s novel, A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD, these poems were all created using the erasure method (also known as blackout or whiteout) on various pages of the original text, resulting in a brand new narrative.

Praise for A JAB OF DEEP URGENCY:

“See, it’s mine” is a line from one of E. Kristin Anderson’s delicious found poems. Her source text is a Jenniger Egan novel and Ms. Anderson has made from those splendid pages something uniquely hers and equally satisfying. Did I mention I love this collection? I do.
-- Ron Koertge, award-winning novelist and author of The Ogre’s Wife and Indigo

With and through Egan's text, Anderson speaks in a vivid and original voice. It's a 'staggering metamorphosis' (a phrase in the book) from one fully realized butterfly to another.
-- Jessy Randall, author if Injecting Dreams into Cows

Found poetry is a deceivingly challenging practice; working within a constrained vocabulary, poets must remake the text anew. In A Jab of Deep Urgency, Anderson carefully erases pieces of Egan’s text, leaving behind a dynamic, personal narrative made all the more remarkable because of the myriad voices represented in the original text. The poems, each remarkable in their own right, cohere into a perceptive commentary on the relationships people have with each other and the environments in which they live.
-- Jenni B. Baker, editor-in-chief of The Found Poetry Review

Using the needle of poetry, Anderson extracts the emotive music in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad like an expert phlebotomist. Spare, dramatic, lyrical, and revealing, the poems in A Jab of Deep Urgency are strange and playful portraits of the exposed inner life. Confident without seeming cold, Anderson’s poems are as unique as the novel they were inspired by.
-- Ada Limón, author of Lucky Wreck and Sharks in the Rivers

Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet and glitter enthusiast living mostly at a Starbucks somewhere in Austin, Texas. A Connecticut College graduate with a B.A. in classics, Kristin’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Kristin co-edited the award-winning DEAR TEEN ME anthology and is the editor of the literary anthology COME AS YOU ARE, an anthology of writing on 90’s pop culture (Anomalous Press). Kristin’s poetry and flash fiction have appeared in The Texas Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Puerto del Sol, The Pinch, Barrelhouse Online, Cotton Xenomorph and FreezeRay Poetry and she has work forthcoming in Birdfeast, Entropy, and Harpur Palate. Kristin is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including A GUIDE FOR THE PRACTICAL ABDUCTEE (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), PRAY, PRAY, PRAY: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press, 2015), FIRE IN THE SKY (Grey Book Press, 2016), SHE WITNESSES (dancing girl press, 2016), WE’RE DOING WITCHCRAFT (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2016), 17 SEVENTEEN XVII (Grey Book Press, 2017) and BEHIND, ALL YOU’VE GOT (Semiperfect Press). She hand-wrote her first trunk book at sixteen. It was about the band Hanson and may or may not still be in a notebook in her parents’ garage. Kristin is a poetry reader at Cotton Xenomorph and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked the night shift at The New Yorker. She blogs at EKristinAnderson.com and tweets at @ek_anderson.

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, I hope I can do this book some justice through this review.

I have to begin by saying that I actually haven't read A Visit from The Goon Squad, which is the jumping point for these poems. I say 'jumping point' because that is exactly what found poetry is - a starting base for something completely different and unique. And the author embodies that definition in A Jab of Deep Urgency. But, despite not reading the novel these poems grew out of, I still fell in love with them.

I think my favorite part about these poems is the author isn't afraid to let them develop into abstract, into
paradox, into subtlety and occasional profanity. Each poem is like a flower - some half-open, some in full bloom, and others showing their deep roots. All of the poems examine what it means to see through the eyes of poetry - what it means to be human, to be discovering oneself and to be part of the world.

I think my favorite poem in this book is 'Open Windows,' because somehow that one particularly speaks to me about relationships and perhaps Time. At least my interpretation of it. That's another thing I like about these poems - they're ambiguous in all the right ways, and imagistic enough to give you a connotative picture in your mind.

I know that I'll keep returning to these poems to breathe them in deeply. So, if you want to read a contemporary book of poetry, and/or are interested in reading found poetry, read this. Seriously.