Filtered through the twin lenses of human history and personal memory, and suffused with ironic appreciation, A Form of Optimism engages in a prismatic meditation on beauty and evil, cornucopia and loss. The book becomes a lyrical mosaic, its compelling poems the broken pieces: sharp-edged and colorful, translucent, evocative. Drawing on the author's cross-cultural work in international health, the poems range widely and naturally across setting, personage, and tongue--from Istanbul to Detroit, Mother Teresa to Gorm the Old, Swahili to Sanskrit. Variously anxious, rueful, witty, tender, and worn, A Form of Optimism transcribes an arc of compassion and hope, embracing the sublime mysteries of the world and the word.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
" . . . He shows himself capable of some truly fresh and vivid writing."--New York Times Book Review
"After assessing the dark tone of the book's poetry, one is initially struck by the quality of language. There is beauty in these lines... Jacobstein manages these moments of beauty and pathos almost flawlessly, propelling the reader across the globe and into fragile moments of childhood."--Adam McGraw, Arts & Letters
"Jacobstein's poems are both accessible and powerful." --Blogcrictics magazine
"A number of his early poems reflected his experiences in medicine, but his poet's eye and pen roam over what sometimes seems like the whole world, past and present."--Chapel Hill News
"After assessing the dark tone of the book's poetry, one is initially struck by the quality of language. There is beauty in these lines... Jacobstein manages these moments of beauty and pathos almost flawlessly, propelling the reader across the globe and into fragile moments of childhood."--Adam McGraw, Arts & Letters
"Jacobstein's poems are both accessible and powerful." --Blogcrictics magazine
"A number of his early poems reflected his experiences in medicine, but his poet's eye and pen roam over what sometimes seems like the whole world, past and present."--Chapel Hill News
Review
"If poets were athletes, Roy Jacobstein's specialty would be the triple jump, that graceful, hysterical combination of running and leaping that can take a competitor fifty feet or more. Look at a poem like 'The Mystery and Melancholy of the Street,' for example, in which he sails all the way from Pago Pago to Argentina to Billie Holiday to Benjamin Franklin in just a few lines. And when the intern treating his busted cl;avicle says "hoops," he thinks of the little girl in Giorgio di Chirico's famous painting, rolling her hoop into the ominous shade. And out again: not in the painting, but in Jacobstein's mind, so agile and richly imaginative that his every glance amounts, as the title of this collection says, to a form of optimism." (David Kirby )
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet.
|
|||
|
Video reviews
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 5
books:
- Eve Names The Animals (Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize) by Susan Donnelly in Front Matter
- Beautiful Motion: Poems by Dana Roeser (Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize) by Dana Roeser in Front Matter
- Bullroarer: A Sequence (Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize) by Ted Genoways in Front Matter
- Bright Moves (Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize) by J. Allyn Rosser in Front Matter
- The Eighth Continent (Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize) by Don Boes in Front Matter
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
