Blowdown

by Jessica L. Walsh

84 pages, Paperback

Published February 18, 2026

About the author

Jessica L. Walsh is a poet and professor at Harper College in suburban Chicago, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She is the author of two chapbooks, Knocked Around and The Division of Standards. Her work has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Midwestern Gothic, Ninth Letter, and more. How to Break My Neck is her first full-length collection.

Reviews

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

A review of Blowdown by Jessica L. Walsh

It is hard to know where to start in reviewing this book of poetry. Jessica L. Walsh’s Blowdown came at me from so many angles it nearly blew the top of my head clean off. Most of her poems refer to those who came before us and how they set down so many ideas of how there exist opposites for every feeling and thought. We live in a book of contradictions. It is like her poetic wanderings sit on opposite ends of a teeter-totter. The speaker in her first poem “Folly” refers to herself. She writes:
“I was not ready to be alive,
not the way whole rooms require,
but I spilled onto this land anyway,
with all its open snowy fields,”
And she ends the poem with these lines:
“Five decades in plain sight
and what do I have to show for surviving---”
I would chime in here to remind this poet that she has some exquisite poetry to show for it. And we, the readers, are the ones who benefit.
One point on which most of us agree is that those who came before us did much to lay the groundwork for our lives, our motivations, our poetry. And this poet always shows us two opposite sides of a coin. In “Mausoleum,” she writes:
“I tried to rope myself
to people of the living world,
to anchor love,
as tied to this side as I am to the other.”
In my time as a teacher, my students have engaged in the process of writing research papers, most of them arguments. I always stress to them how important it is to give both sides equal credit. Even if we argue more strenuously for one or the other, both sides have equal bearing and need to be acknowledged.
In “The Silence,” Walsh poses that,
“The cruel cut---
the awful silent finality---
the terrible grandeur and power of it---
those who were here and now are gone.”
But do we all live now in their shadow or their sunshine? That is a question Jessica’s readers can only answer for themselves. The tug of war between life and death appears in the poem “I May Never See You Again.”
“Everyday he was about to die
Though no one told him
In these times
Sickness grew from its name
…
Thirty years pass
before he dies
every prophecy of death
is someday true.”
In “Bronson 1985,” the poet shares these lines:
Later the yard is rumpled
but empty,
I’m sure all the crows died
and I’m just as sure
they fled to safety.”
How can a yard be rumpled if empty, and all crows dead, yet they flew away? Definitely a paradox comes to mind juxtaposing these ideas with each other. I am writing this review at the same time as I am not. Right?
In “A Cemetery with No Stones,” the poet says:
“from search and source,
I find no news of death,
neither can I prove
she lives, or ever lived.
…
I ask my other friends,
Was she real? Do you remember?
and we doubt ourselves more
as years slough away
until light shines through memory
and still the ache endures”
Wow! What do we believe? And is proof something exists just as much proof that it does not? And how can a cemetery have “no stones”? What a conundrum. At this point in Blowdown the poet had me somewhat rattled. Do I believe what I’ve always believed? Or do I suddenly dismantle all my beliefs and trash them? Has my light gone out? Extinguished itself? Or did I do that to myself?
I don’t know if I have read a poetry book that has made me question myself as much as this book has. In “Life Piled on Life 1865,” Walsh refers to the Civil War aftermath and a soldier pondering:
“Could be it’s too easy, home and family,
that he misses the indifference of war,
the confusion of blues and greys in mud,
men falling noble or clumsy towards death
while he keeps himself just this side of it.”
Do we ever get away from either side? Or are we perpetually stuck directly in between?
So many questions are raised by this poet. She certainly forces the reader to become an active participant rather than just a reader on the sidelines.
In one of her final poems, Jessica admits:
“I unleash myself,
disheveling toward the day
when men give up their bus seats,
not chivalrous but uneasy
at the sight of a woman eroding,
I am ready to join
my ghosts and crones.”
This poet is confessional, logical, eroding but so truthful as to how those who came before were so influential. We must give them their due. Jessica does that. We are today because of those who were yesterday.
Jessica L. Walsh leaves us with these lines:
“I asked too much of you
Let me ask too much of myself
For whatever’s left of this raggedy life.
I release you to the road
where I’ll find you again.”
On second thought, I think Jessica did blow the top of my head clean off. And as a fellow poet, I don’t mind at all.

(jacob erin-cilberto, author of 27)

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of poems about family, inheritance, survival, and history.

from Folly: "a scared-fierce creature / with neither path nor camouflage. // Five decades in plain sight / and what do I have to show for surviving—"

from With My Boots On: "I ripped into life / looking for a fight / I can't win / or tap out of. // So give me my accounting. / Pulp this family tree / and make of it a ledger."

from Thine Is the Kingdom: "I'm quick with bread / but near impossible with trespasses. / I forget forgiveness every time, always have, / even when my grandmother promised a quarter / for a proper recitation. // I knew her disappointment / before I knew what to call it. / She died still hoping I'd grow out of myself."

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The cover of this book – a black and white photo of a dirt-covered shovel- prepares you to start digging. Over the span of 52 poems, the poet drags the reader through the deep-down dirt of Midwest living and the rock-hard women who reside there. Searching the roots of her own family tree, she uncovers secrets, reveals truths, and shakes the branches until every rotten apple falls at your feet to roll around in the dirt of reality, but at the core of each apple, we find not a pearl but a kernel of truth as hard as any unpopped corn, ready to break a tooth. Bite down on Blowdown and sink your teeth into a chewy collection of strong, dark poems like a cup of black coffee for the soul.