Critical Commentary
Praise for Kingdom of Glass & Seed:
“Kingdom of Glass and Seed,” Jules Jacob’s anthem to love and loss is a fierce testimony to forgiveness and redemption. These arresting poems move like a pool of water. Ripples and vibrations map the relationships—parental, siblings, lovers, nature—imbued with the resonant joy and pain of living in such a fragile world. This artful weave renders how the cycle of life replenishes and reseeds, as these poems tender so lyrically a generative healing. Jacob’s brave narrative explores the self with all flaws, vulnerabilities, and traumas, and threads an astounding bountiful chorus of language, accompanied by a windfall of sublime epiphanies.
—Cynthia Atkins, author of Still-Life with God
“Early in Jules Jacob’s riveting new collection, in the poem “My Mother Eats Wyoming” we find the lines
in matchbox beds while they recovered
from amputations guaranteeing
the patients couldn’t escape.
And there it is: beneath the title’s light-fingered surreality (the book’s signature tone), scenes of hardscrabble tenderness and sometimes unbearable cruelty, scavenged and placed ever so carefully side by side in memory’s reliquary. And so it goes, too, in line after stunning line. What did Rilke write? Every angel is terrifying. A truth Jacob seems to know in her bones and one, reading these poems, we feel in ours.”
—Daniel Lawless, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Plume: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry
“In Kingdom of Glass & Seed, Jules Jacob writes with an attentive eye to the smallest details of flesh and flower: ’treasures where others see / nothing unusual.’ These poems enter the dislocated world of foster care and addiction in language that is deeply attuned to the rawness of experience, where nature is both haven and metaphor. ‘All mothers can be as happy / as their troubled child’ writes Jacob in a collection that seeks forgiveness not retribution, that holds suffering in a tender, but alert gaze.
—Jessica Cuello, author of Liar and Yours, Creature
Praise for Rappaccini’s Garden:
“Jules Jacob and Sonja Johannson invite you to walk alongside lost laureates, ‘feast / on wild rhubarb, parsnip, wine,’ and ‘burst in bloom’ as two masters of the art of poetry and horticulture lead you through a lush garden trellised with the history of twenty-six gorgeously written and illustrated poems. Though you may enter Rappacini’s Garden a stranger, you will surely leave a seasoned gardener, blowing ‘a kiss for every berry’ and poem you experienced along the way.”
—Dr. Jordi Alonso, author of Honeyvoiced and The Lovers’ Phrasebook
“Kneel in this poisonous garden and listen closely as Jules Jacob & Sonja Johanson masterfully build story and suspense through each flower, its presence and endless possibility— ‘Suicide root’s not for chewing, / its carrot scent’s a sham.’ Let each vine wrap itself tenderly around your wrist and pull you in. Learn how to seal a lucky buckeye and be ‘careful not to brush against the leaves’ of the Mango Tree. Enter the garden full of delights and poisons, each gorgeous illustration and poem beckoning for you.”
—Dr. Minadora Macheret, author of Love Me, Anyway
Praise for The Glass Sponge:
“In this strong and vulnerable collection of poetry, the poet spins out a thoughtful imagery of innocence and culpability, for (and of) ’the users and the abused.’ Salvation by imagination is the lifeline running throughout this chapbook—the imagination of other worlds, the worlds of one’s own volition—from old baseball fields, to quicksilver waves, to the vast unjudging Milky Way, accompanied by Michelangelo’s angel and Rodin’s Cupid. These poems should be read in places where, as the poet puts it, ‘The Magic Was Missing From The Room’, in places where one’s ‘blood runs forsythia yellow’, where the signature listeners are soldier-stiff Gapkids facing a tender bleakness. Jules Jacob inhabits a dichotomous world, and with delicate magnetism, draws us into it, in each poem.
—Dr. Harrison Solow, Pushcart Prize winning writer, professor, ghostwriter, and author of numerous publications including Felicity & Barbara Pym.
