A World in Which - by J L Conrad (Paperback)

About the Book

The arresting poems of J.L. Conrad mesmerize as they turn on dislocation and disjunction, the spaces in which we lose footing.

Book Synopsis

Allusive, mystical, and deeply felt, J.L. Conrad's A World in Which calls to mind Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus. Her lyricism is impeccable, her imagination radical. Open houses, carpool lines, married life, pet care, and election days barely conceal the dystopian of scarab infestations, environmental illness, mass surveillance, biblical floods, and meteor showers. Granted communion with their beloved dead, the living persevere despite the "approaching hoofbeats" of the Apocalypse. As these visionary poems avow, "It falls to us to shovel dirt over the flames."

-Carolyn Hembree, For Today

Review Quotes

J.L. Conrad's A World in Which opens with "a question of loss." Conrad's goal is not to answer that question, but to survey its shadows. These elegant, brooding lyrics are deeply rooted in the winter realities of a household, while an interwoven series of prose poems, "Miracle Town," exists on an alternate plane in which trees make their way through neighborhoods, "leaves flapping like tongues as they congregate in small packs before dispersing and slipping back into the long pockets they have left in the soil." This collection will resonate with anyone who has felt the precise weight of love and now, like a fruit readying to slip its skin, must confront the alchemies of heat and time.

-Sandra Beasley, Made to Explode

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 and Native Species