An Afternoon with Elizabeth Jacobson and Jen Karetnick

***Please note: This event will take place at the Books & Books in Coral Gables at 265 Aragon Ave. Tickets are FREE and books will be available for purchase at the event. Want your copy early or can't make it in-person? Order the books and

Elizabeth Jacobson’s new poems are both profound and transparent, which is rare. Also rare is their intimacy with the natural world, rendered in language memorable for its near microscopic observation and precision. Set in the desert, the tropics, and the human mind, the poems move fluently from family to ecological grief to the life of the spirit and beyond. Curious, eloquent, surprising, and probing, this book takes a hard, compassionate look at what it means to be human right now, moment to moment, on this injured planet. It’s a book that deepens every time I read it. —Chase Twichell, author of Things as It Is
In Elizabeth Jacobson’s poetry, “What is the lure of this world?” is not just a question but a way to encounter what is actual in whatever she sees, imagines or remembers. Her replies create the bracing sensation of engagement with a world just now coming into range. There is enthrallment—and also candor, “As if this will cure one failure of the self after another.” There Are as Many Songs in the World as Branches of Coral is a profound achievement. —Ron Slate, author of Joy Ride
From the opening poem, where “even a jar void of substance holds emptiness as if it were full,” we are carried by a poet who looks so hard she sees past seeming emptiness, past void, to the energies and emotions that bind us to each other and the natural world. Here, sugardusted bee’s “eat the sweetness off each other’s bodies,” pine roots spread “their ballad into the earth,” and every observation of the more-than-human is an opportunity to delight in
the rituals and desires of others, which might then reflect us back to ourselves. Poems of
childhood share the origin story of a poet who “put anything in my mouth /to know it:”
sucking salt from the legs of starfish, ash from discarded cigarettes, even dirt clinging to a
hairpin from the grounds of Birkenau. Here, the poet insists on taking in the full range of
the world’s hardships and wonders and, like a bee converting nectar to honey, gives it back
to us made new in searching, sensual poems. —Jessica Jacobs, author of unalone
This new collection offers up many secrets. That the human heart has no space or weight
limits, is one. Strong works of art like this prompt us to pause. Pause via seduction wielded
by language composed of ether, quarter notes and whole rests, Floridian beach sand, high
desert soil and leaps of the mind. None lost on the Soul. —Tommy Archuleta, author of Susto

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With poems that address life on a historic mango grove, mid-life motherhood, and Miami’s ecological emergencies, Inheritance with a High Error Rate also asks the larger question: What are we leaving for future generations? In a variety of free verse, received, and invented forms, the answers tackle a range of very South Florida subjects, from never-ending harvests of tropical fruit to octopuses found in parking garages to peacocks who stalk flash-flooded streets. Poems in Inheritance with a High Error Rate were included in dozens of prestigious journals such as Crab Orchard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, One, Painted Bride Quarterly, Terrain.org, Under a Warm Green Linden, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Waxwing Literary Journal. They won the Tiferet Writing Contest for Poetry and the Romeo Lemay Prize; were nominated for a “Best of the Net” award; and have been collected in a variety of anthologies including Campfire Stories Vol. II (eds. Ilyssa Kyu and Dave Kyu, Mountaineer Books, Spring 2023); The Book of Life After Death (ed. Tim Lindner, Tolsun Books, 2023); Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (eds. Alvarez, Gemme, Hill, and Ivy, West Virginia University Press, 2023); Show Us Your Papers (Main Street Rag, 2020); and Rewilding: Poems for the Environment (Flexible Press, 2020), among others.

Elizabeth Jacobson's second collection of poems, Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air, won the New Measure Poetry Prize, selected by Marianne Boruch (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2019) and the 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for both New Mexico Poetry and Best New Mexico Book. She was the fifth poet laureate of Santa Fe and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow.
A 2024 National Poetry Series finalist, Jen Karetnick is the author of 11 collections of poetry, including Inheritance with a High Error Rate (January 2024), the winner of the 2022 Cider Press Review Book Award, and the forthcoming What Forges Us Steel (Alternating Current Press, 2025). Her work has won the Sweet: Lit Poetry Prize, Tiferet Writing Contest for Poetry, Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition, Hart Crane Memorial Prize, and Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, among other honors, and received support from the Vermont Studio Center, Roundhouse Foundation, Wassaic Projects, Write On, Door County, Wildacres Retreat, Mother's Milk Artist Residency, Centrum, Artists in Residence in the Everglades, and elsewhere. The co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, she has had work in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review Poem of the Week, Pleiades, Plume, Shenandoah, Sixth Finch, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. See jkaretnick.com.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, United States