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Itzhak Perlman's Broken String: Poems
Winner, Helen Kay Chapbook Prize 2016
What plucks at the heart strings of Jacqueline Jules’ intense poems of Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String is a dialectic between faith and loss where science mediates. “Both Science and Faith insist/ nothing is random.” Grief is a squatter—an unwanted
presence after friends and family leave the bereaved. The poet dares to challenge Jean-Paul Sartre on despair and suggests to the physical therapist “better to tease a tiger/ than poke a pain.” Everything Emily Dickinson, vending machines, a gypsy girl with rocks in her pockets who steps into a river. This is a smart and smarting journey through the human condition. —Karren L. Alenier, author of The Anima of Paul Bowles
In the apocryphal story told about Yitzhak Perlman during his concert at Lincoln Center in 1995 when one of the four violin
strings suddenly tore, and he proceeded to reconceive and play the entire work with three remaining strings, he said that “sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can make with what you have left.” If ever there were a work that explores the aftermath of loss, it is this powerful and highly original collection by Jacqueline Jules. “Every life is lived on a high wire,/ strung over the treetops…//Don’t expect to feel safe.” The poet reminds us not to waste time grieving over “stolen credit cards” and a “broken car on the day of a big interview.” Reminds us how “Joy sits on a seesaw with Grief.” If it’s divinity we seek, best we gather the “stone tablets” and carry them through the wilderness of time. Consolation can be “sunlight/streaming through/serrated shapes…like fingers” that “wipe” away “tears.” —Myra Sklarew, Author of New & Selected Poems
This lovely and moving collection explores what happens when grief is chronic. After the shock of initial loss, when grief
becomes a daily companion, we must learn, as Jacqueline Jules wisely writes, to find music in our crippled instruments. Like
Jean-Paul Sartre, we “cross that cruel river”; like Isaac Newton, our personal math proves “we are vulnerable to falling objects.” —Kim Roberts, founding editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly
What plucks at the heart strings of Jacqueline Jules’ intense poems of Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String is a dialectic between faith and loss where science mediates. “Both Science and Faith insist/ nothing is random.” Grief is a squatter—an unwanted
presence after friends and family leave the bereaved. The poet dares to challenge Jean-Paul Sartre on despair and suggests to the physical therapist “better to tease a tiger/ than poke a pain.” Everything Emily Dickinson, vending machines, a gypsy girl with rocks in her pockets who steps into a river. This is a smart and smarting journey through the human condition. —Karren L. Alenier, author of The Anima of Paul Bowles
In the apocryphal story told about Yitzhak Perlman during his concert at Lincoln Center in 1995 when one of the four violin
strings suddenly tore, and he proceeded to reconceive and play the entire work with three remaining strings, he said that “sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can make with what you have left.” If ever there were a work that explores the aftermath of loss, it is this powerful and highly original collection by Jacqueline Jules. “Every life is lived on a high wire,/ strung over the treetops…//Don’t expect to feel safe.” The poet reminds us not to waste time grieving over “stolen credit cards” and a “broken car on the day of a big interview.” Reminds us how “Joy sits on a seesaw with Grief.” If it’s divinity we seek, best we gather the “stone tablets” and carry them through the wilderness of time. Consolation can be “sunlight/streaming through/serrated shapes…like fingers” that “wipe” away “tears.” —Myra Sklarew, Author of New & Selected Poems
This lovely and moving collection explores what happens when grief is chronic. After the shock of initial loss, when grief
becomes a daily companion, we must learn, as Jacqueline Jules wisely writes, to find music in our crippled instruments. Like
Jean-Paul Sartre, we “cross that cruel river”; like Isaac Newton, our personal math proves “we are vulnerable to falling objects.” —Kim Roberts, founding editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly
37 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 2017
About the author
Jacqueline Jules
82 books91 followersI am a children's author, teacher, librarian, and poet. My books include the Zapato Power series, the Sofia Martinez series, Pluto is Peeved, Unite or Die: How Thirteen States Became a Nation, Duck for Turkey Day, Never Say a Mean Word Again, and Feathers for Peacock. Please visit me at http://www.jacquelinejules.com
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January 26, 2025
The title of this exquisite collection of poems, focused on the long, slow, uncertain, and unpredictable journey through deep grief, refers to the story of the virtuoso violinist continuing to play on masterfully despite his instrument's broken string. Poet Jacqueline Jules rejects any glib or facile assurances that we should expect to be able to accomplish feats like this out of our own brokenness: "Maybe the broken heart / does not beat stronger." Maybe the rainbow is not adequate compensation for the rain (in the poem titled "Consolation Prize"). Yet her unflinching exploration of grief in this slim but powerful volume offers hard-won hope in the end, not by denying the reality of grief, but showing it with such honesty that readers enduring their own losses will feel less alone in her wise and compassionate company.
Displaying 1 of 1 review