Published: A World in Which, by J.L. Conrad
Congratulations to Jenny whose poem "Miracle Town" was featured on Verse Daily on July 30, 2024.
Praise for A World in Which
The arresting poems of J.L. Conrad mesmerize as they turn on dislocation and disjunction, the spaces in which we lose footing. Here the ordinary shifts, the daily set askew at unexpected angles. I felt the top of my head taken off in poem after poem as the poet worked her Dickinsonian magic. Zoo animals escape to run through the streets. People do not heal, but miraculously severed heads still sing. The world the poet inhabits rests on a foundation of potential doom, of hushed anxieties, yet “love keeps unfolding.” And though “we make our way out not knowing the way back,” a faith of sorts calls out to us, assuring us “what you have will not be everything / but will be enough.” For this, we should give thanks.
—Todd Davis, Coffin Honey
Praise for A World in Which
The arresting poems of J.L. Conrad mesmerize as they turn on dislocation and disjunction, the spaces in which we lose footing. Here the ordinary shifts, the daily set askew at unexpected angles. I felt the top of my head taken off in poem after poem as the poet worked her Dickinsonian magic. Zoo animals escape to run through the streets. People do not heal, but miraculously severed heads still sing. The world the poet inhabits rests on a foundation of potential doom, of hushed anxieties, yet “love keeps unfolding.” And though “we make our way out not knowing the way back,” a faith of sorts calls out to us, assuring us “what you have will not be everything / but will be enough.” For this, we should give thanks.
—Todd Davis, Coffin Honey
|
J.L. Conrad is the author of the full-length poetry collection A Cartography of Birds (Louisiana State University Press), and the chapbooks Recovery (winner of the 2022 Robert Phillips Chapbook Prize, Texas Review Press) and Not If But When (winner of the third annual Dead Lake Chapbook Competition, Salt Hill). Her poems have appeared in Pleiades, Sugar House Review, Salamander, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. An earlier version of this manuscript was a finalist with YesYes Books. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
www.jlconrad.com Available at Terrapin Bookstore Amazon B&N Bookshop |
