A Form of Optimism
Winner of the 2006 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize
selected by Lucia Perillo
"As a poet and a doctor engaged in international health, Roy Jacobstein observes the world
from a singularly important vantage. He dwells not on the obvious if complicated politics of
the virus but instead on the details that skitter away from the temptations of propaganda."
— From Lucia Perillo's Introduction to A Form of Optimism
"From a calligraphy shop in Istanbul to advertisements for caskets and toothpaste in
Lilongwe, to a bottle cap of Faygo Red Pop, 'carbonated taste of the Midwest,' Roy
Jacobstein's curious, unflinching eyes see more than most of us ever could. He reveals the
blinding complexity of a world that encompasses both Hitler's watercolors and 'the gold
glinting from an armadillo's shell.' Jacobstein's poems are as exquisitely crafted as a
mosaic in Topkapi, and like Rilke's, they say to us in a voice we can trust, 'You must
change your life.' Courageous and sensual, these poems 'claw deep into hard ground.'"
— Robert Thomas
"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 clavicle 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
"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
