Moon Jar

by Didi Jackson

In her intimately compelling debut collection Moon Jar, Didi Jackson explores the life-altering and heart-rending loss of a husband to suicide. In an effort to understand this unforeseen and inexplicable act, she maps with immense candor the emotional difficulty of continuing her responsibility as a mother while attempting to regain a sense of normalcy. While grief never fully subsides, Jackson allows herself over time to rediscover love as she contends with the brutal and haunting grip of human trauma. These affirmative poems, precise and grace-begetting, exhibit an admirable self-devotion to healing and recovery that is metamorphic and cathartic. Turning to biblical narratives as well as seminal works of art by the likes of Hildegard of Bingen, Pablo Picasso, Sappho, Mark Rothko, Kazimir Malevich, Hieronymus Bosch, and Frédéric Chopin, she orchestrates a tableau of conversations around human suffering, the natural world, and impermanence. And like the Korean porcelain moon jar, these poems mark and celebrate the imperfection of existence. At once raw and vulnerable, Moon Jar shows lyric poetry to be a fundamental and permanent force for survival.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published April 21, 2020

Reviews

[Bernie Gourley]

Review Forthcoming

[Maria Hummel]

"If I listen to Latin long enough,/I believe I speak it." What struck me most about Didi Jackson's heartbreaking collection is her ability to translate a private, personal grief into the universal. Though this volume centers on losing her husband to suicide, and many of the poems hurt emotionally to read, there's a distinctive, abiding radiance to the work. Jackson's illuminating attentiveness to the body, and to the images and histories of the natural world and art, drew me into her journey from the land of the dead back to the living. A powerful, deeply affecting debut.

[Judi Easley]

First thoughts: Deep. Needs to be studied, not skimmed or read lightly. Trigger topics: suicide, grief, loss of mate. Intense imagery. Recommended

[Sholeh Wolpé]

I loved this book. Heartbreaking and empowering at the same time.

[Natalija Kuznecov]

Heartbreaking and tough. Poems are about her husband's suicide.

[Amy Joy]

Beautiful and haunting, delicious prose

[leah]

devoured. did not let the book close start to finish. heartbreaking and honest

[Andrea]

Gorgeous collection of poems!

[Sarah]

"I believed in the clockwork of waves,
still do I guess. Hoping they somehow will
hurry time, or at least for now deafen it."

[Evan]

She was my instructor for two classes and I will never tolerate so much as a bad thought about her-and-her-work.

[Mary Ellen Woods]

Raw and honest, heartfelt, sad and yet hopeful. A full rendering of grief and the emotions of losing a loved one to tragedy.

[Kayjah]

This book took me through so many stages of grief, loss, and progress. It was absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking