The Fool

The Fool takes us to this basic truth: that when we feel most unloved and unlovable, we enter the space of endings and beginnings, the space where we must decide whether or not to believe. This collection of poetry is thus an article of faith, po... Read more

The Fool takes us to this basic truth: that when we feel most unloved and unlovable, we enter the space of endings and beginnings, the space where we must decide whether or not to believe. This collection of poetry is thus an article of faith, poems that dare us-in unflinching terms-to believe. Jean's poetic emerges in twists of language that hurtle into dangerous places, steep falls and banked curves that bring us back to consider life's vital air and light. ~ Afaa Michael Weaver, The Government of Nature Jennifer Jean's The Fool asks us, 'Aren't we supposed to see after time spent in the dark?' And blessedly, the answer is yes: so much life goes on to breathe and dwell in this exceptional debut collection: muggy men, hornets, vespers, '...the eyes of these poems black like beetles.' The Fool gives us a world where '...we need every red-engine knell to slumber...and then we could wake stoked to survive.' This is a poetry that does more than survive in our collective memory: it flashes, it burns. ~ Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Lucky Fish When you open Jennifer Jean's new book The Fool, be ready to travel with her. The title comes from an archetypal figure in the Tarot cards, one typically imagined as a wanderer, someone open to life, needing freedom but perhaps buffeted by it too, a figure not beyond fear, but not afraid of the dark either. These are also the virtues you'll find in Jennifer Jean's poems. They travel back to a hardscrabble childhood, and forward through a young woman's coming of age. She also takes us inward via dreams and shape-shifting visions, charting thereby some of the wilder and more difficult areas of the psyche. At each turn of the journey, we accompany a person in the process of acquiring hard-earned and utterly worthwhile spiritual wisdom. In effect, what we witness in these vivid poems is the growth of a soul. ~ Fred Marchant, Full Moon Boat and The Looking House Less