Jackknife: New and Selected Poems

by Jan Beatty

In Jackknife: New and Selected Poems, Beatty travels the turns and collisions of over twenty years of work. She moves from first-person narratives to poems that straddle the page in fragments, to lines that sprawl with long lines of train tracks. Always landing in meaning, we are inside the body—not in a confessional voice, not autobiography—but arriving through the expanded, exploded image of many stories and genders.
 
The new poems leap imagistically from the known world to the purely imagined, as in the voice in "Abortion with Gun Barrel": "I am the counselor,/there are cracks in the barrel of the gun/there is aiming/shots of sorrow—/ shots of light.” Commitment to a rabid feminist voice continues, but arrival has a new ring to it, with beginnings rescripted: “I am a bastard./I walk around in this body of mine."
 
Beatty’s fascination with the highway and the breakout West jackknifes at the crossroads of the brutal and the white plains of loss—the body torn down and resurrected in the twenty first century.

Genres: Poetry

168 pages, Paperback

Published February 14, 2017

Reviews

[Timons Esaias · Rating 5 out of 5]

This contains, along with the new poems, a healthy selection of Jan Beatty's greatest hits, so how could it not be a 5-star book??

I will note that this is the second Madwomen in the Attic title containing the word 'jackknife' in the title, and I think the word occurs in the text of several other Madwomen poems. The police, or somebody, should probably look into that.

[liyah · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love so many of these poems and they’ve inspired a lot of my own writing. the only reason this gets four stars is cause i don’t think i have enough like experience to really understand and feel what these poems are telling me. they’re beautiful so i love them but am not in love with them.

my fav pieces:
Ravenous Blue
Letter to Mario
Poetry Workshop at the Homeless Shelter
My Father Teaches Me Light
A Necessary Waist: Plath Grows Thinner Reading Stein
Lake is a red pigment
Cruising the Blue Belt

[Bill O'driscoll · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something of retrospective for the veteran, Pittsburgh-based poet, with work culled from several collections dating to the mid 1990s. Themes recur -- sex, violence, the blue-collar working life, a mild obsession with Jim Morrison -- but there's a good bit of range also to these poems, from tough to tender and back again.

[Deirdre Fagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind-blowing collection. I heard Jan Beatty at The Dodge Poetry Festival this past fall and I am a fan. This collection is a journey of slaps and surprises that needs to be heard. Raw, beautiful, and necessary. So glad we have Beatty's words -- they are especially needed in the current climate. Beatty tells it loudly, honestly, and without flinching. We need to take it and pass it on.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A find collection of Jan Beatty's past poems along with some new work! Great reading!

[Karen Boyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Beatty's tough talk and the way she captures the rhythm of people's voices in her poetry.

[Brenna Hanley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very much enjoyed this poetry collection. I have not read Beatty's work before, but definitely would consider picking it up in the future.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jan Beatty's poems have a kind of sting, a twist, but a softness too. Her vulnerability shows once in a while through her toughness, and the combination is fascinating.

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I often have reservations about New and Selected Poems collections, but this is the perfect primer on Jan Beatty's work--strong, gritty poems that are anything but simple. This collection allows you to see the development of Beatty's poetics and the constant themes of love, heartache, gender disparity/sexual discrimination, rock and roll, and the body incessant urgings. Beatty's poems resonate with memorable images and agressive musicality.