Award-winning poet Jill Alexander Essbaum takes her reader on a three-day journey through death and grief. Filled with her trademark sensuality and humor, here Essbaum also addresses issues of faith, fiercely questioning God while also trusting in the promise of resurrection.
This is a rough book to read. There's tension in every line, and despair, and some hope. And boy. It's so unlike her other books, and excellent in an utterly commanding way. These poems demand attention.
Is it fair to review it since I'm the publisher? Well, I published it because I love it. Even after it's back from the printer, I keep rereading certain poems in this collection.
No, no, no. I will not go. Death can wait its long, late time away, placing daises on someone else's grave.
I am off to elsewhere. Let the devil share his dram and groan with another body's bones. And even Heaven (a place far better than regret) can't have me yet.
JAE split me open with her thumb . . . I could read these poems again and again (and will). She combines the fierce, pious doubt of Vassar Miller with the irreverence and wit of Dorothy parker. I hate mash-up comparisons like that, but IT TRUE. It true.