By Richard Jackson

[ Buy Now! ]

I think he is either the god Hermes or a sparrow. He is certainly a messenger.  And what he says is contained in a single word, although it comes out as amazement, anger, joy, sadness, in an astounding cascade of images, and in a variety of tongues.   He is a poet of great sweep and vision. He is deeply tender. He is a master of music; one of our finest poets.

- Gerald Stern

His lines are witnesses of tremendous density and speed of the more ever powerful NOW in human history.  As technology had to adapt to the godhead's voracious needs, so the poets have to eat exactly the same spot with even higher lucidity, more intelligence and compassion to mourn, to understand and to redeem.  Richard Jackson does it with more inclusiveness than anybody else I know.  His writing helps us to make sense.  It protects us against suffocation.  It bathes our lives.

- Tomaz Salamun

In its range of control, in its rich, ruminating prosody, in its capacity to contain all that it imagines, and especially in its power to place the corruptions of the world against those of the heart, it represents a poetry of scale, in fine yet compelling excess, informed "indeed exalted" by intelligence, irony, vision.

- Stanley Plumly

About the Author

Richard Jackson is the author of nine previous books of poetry, two books of criticism, a translation from Slovene, and several chapbooks. He is a winner of Guggenheim, Fulbright, NEA, NEH and Witter-Bynner Fellowships, five Pushcart appearances, as well as prizes from Prairie Schooner, Rattle and Crazyhorse. He was a recipient of the Slovene Order of Freedom Award for Humanitarian and Literary work in the Balkans. He has taught at the Iowa Summer Festival, Prague Summer Program, Bread Loaf and other venues, and teaches at UT-Chattanooga and the Vermont College of Fine Arts low residency program, winning teaching awards at both schools.