Roy Jacobstein

Winner of the 2000 North Carolina Writers' Network
Poetry Chapbook Competition, selected by Gregory Orr

"There's a tradition of doctor poets and the things they know: stories about people in crisis, an alertness to details, and a clear-eyed knowing of death and love and the necessary jeopardy of living. These poems are proudly in that tradition...what you'd hope for from someone who might hold your life in his hands: who might, a poet, hand you your life transformed."

"These are wonderful poems of great energy, imagination and range"

"This collection is wide-ranging, associatively daring, suffused with affection, intensified by bursts of sweet lyricism, and everywhere leavened with humor, verve and a wise intelligence"

"Jacobstein's imagery is generally stark and inevitable ... the perspective is startling and completely engaging ... his method of creating headlong imagery and odd, enthusiastic connections is well displayed in 'Swale,' a memory of his youthful befuddlement 'deep in urban Detroit' He whisks through his recollection of an early girlfriend, a barbershop, industrial strife, and the sexy appearance of pomegranates, concluding with: Cock, clit, haircut, union card, Latin, Old Norse— where does any of it get us, I ask you. It's all so damned runic. Though have you noticed with Whitman Samplers, how the caramels are in one corner and the nougats in another, and you can see the curve of the cashews peeking through the bittersweet, saying in shards of cashew-speak, pick me. There is much to be thankful for in these ... fine poems."