Ripe

Winner of the 2002 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry Nothing in Roy Jacobstein’s large experience–a union barbershop in mid-century Detroit, the obstetrics ward in a Cambodian refugee camp, the ‘befuddlement’ of childhood, the wisdom of the nursing child, the lab, the boardroom, the luminous common heritage of the printed page–nothing appears to have been lost on him or, thanks to him, on us. In a world beset with loss, this exhilarating, mindful, compassionate book allows us the dream of wholeness. It is tonic for the soul. It is (of how many books can this be said?) from poem to poem and vista to vista, good company.
–Linda Gregerson