Jam

Joe-Anne McLaughlin
98 pages (2001); 429KB download
BOA Editions; ISBN: 1-929918-04-6

DESCRIPTION

Introduction by Stephen Dunn: In her wonderful book "Jam" — a title evocative of jazz and trouble, Joe-Anne McLaughlin pitches and tunes her poems to a wide range of emotional experience, often in the same poem blending the tawdry, the playful, the ruefully sublime. Though her subject matter is indeed often troubling, what I find myself admiring is how her syntactical and musical gifts (McLaughlin's Jazz, I might call it) regularly make what's troubling aesthetically pleasurable, and how they mitigate bold claims.... There's a sense that McLaughlin has lived her poems, but also has lived with her poems, and this is, in part, why "Jam" distinguishes itself. It is a most impressive achievement.