In the Crevice of Time

The collected poems of a greatly gifted poet may not offer the suspense of a well-plotted novel, but there is still a certain drama in seeing the art of a life's work fitted between the covers of one book... The recent poems that make up the last section are some of Jacobsen's very best.

Josephine Jacobsen's poetry... demonstrates not only scrupulous verbal craft but a kind of auditory seriousness, a preference for depth and precision over mere charm or beauty."—

Josephine Jacobsen's mind is exquisite and urbane, which is not to say that it has confined itself to salon conversation or academic discourse... Formal and fastidious, Jacobsen meditates on death—oh, not because she herself is aging, nothing even faintly vulgar like that—because of her apprehension of our fleshly frailty.

Wry, meticulous, compassionate, she casts her diaphanous net over the widest range of subjects, from the dailiness of breakfast with the morning paper ('I spill coffee on a head of state') to the distant apocalypse when the cockroach ('he will be blind/not sterile') inherits the earth.

Healthful and pure, protein and green salad for the mind.