The Leaves in Her Shoes

Poetry. Carol Muske writes, I don't think I've ever read a first book of poems so haunted as THE LEAVES IN HER SHOES. Reading these poems is like listening to snatches of song or overhearing half-sentences, mutterings, broken chants of a lost tribe. J.L. Jacobs assembles these shards into a startling and unforgettable collage. Jacobs' lines are at once broken and whole, hinting at the implicit narratives within the natural world: I am walking on a flat plain./ Here and there, beds of rock-salt.// (Let arrows show how strong the westerly winds.)// I locate by initials:/ A wagonload of flowering bulbs./ A land of bogs and swamps.// You draw lines for water routes (`An error in geography). This is a poetry of voices and of silences... THE LEAVES IN HER SHOES casts a spell, a beautiful spell-Carol Frost.