One Throne

by Rae Hoffman Jager

“The poems of Rae Hoffman Jager are so brash, rambunctious, and stand-up funny, and yet so inextricably threaded with poignancy and elegy, they’re like . . . well, like real life. You’ll find it a pleasure to spend some time with her bodacious voice and vision.” ~Albert Goldbarth, Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology and Saving Lives, two-time National Book Critic Circle Award Winner

29 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2017

About the author

Rae Hoffman Jager holds a BA from Warren Wilson College and an MFA from Wichita State University. Her poetry has been published in a variety of online and print journals. In 2016 She was named The New Voice Poet out of Salina, Kansas. This book originally was a finalist with Sundress and Birdcoat Quarterly before finding a home with Kelsay Books. When Rae is not writing and publishing poetry, she is spending her time as a birth doula, stillbirth advocate, and yoga teacher. She lives on a big hill in Bellevue, KY with her living daughter, son in the stars, spouse, and two old dogs.

Reviews

[Barton Smock]

Because it isn’t uncommon to mistake
an inkling for an omen.– {from} One Answer, and Making the Best of It

Rae Hoffman Jager, in her book One Throne, employs a lyric of transformative repetition. Answer knows nothing but its double and humor enters the ache trade armed with loneliness. After reading, I felt I’d eaten the doll out of house and home and that perhaps absence could indeed make heads or tails of being upside down. Which is to say I felt optimistically worried and deeply momentary. Jager is a priestess of distraction, and distraction, here, is the key to being present.

so think of this instead, dear—-
The ocean is so violent. – {from} First Loss

These are poems populated with cameo and propped up with a singular crookedness. Poems in which a young person, made anxious by the song of an owl, seeks both call and response from the reader, you, who will then admit quietly to yourself that you need help watching television. Poems that are awake and/or/and summoned.

So I guess we spent all this time looking for a map. I don’t know what to mourn. As for Jager’s resuscitations of the deceptively trivial- I think they tell us we matter.

[Kathryn]

Rae Hoffman Jager's skill with words and storytelling is truly a gift to this world. This collection of poems shows a gritty, glorious, heartbreaking look at life, in language that in both beautiful and relatable. Even if you don't normally think of yourself as a poetry-type, you will want to pick up this collection.

[Sara Moore Wagner]

Crushing, heartbreaking, funny, political, loving poems which reveal themselves in different ways with each read. Watch out for this poet!

[Emily Swegert]

Rae is a good friend and a brilliant writer. She exquisitely encompasses many of the vast and interesting experiences of life in her thoughtful poems and prose.