A Pear-Shaped World by Mary Strong Jackson

There’s a bit of alchemy in all of Mary Strong Jackson’s poetry, that turns reminisces about her parents into psalms of forgiveness, takes her meditations on our thoughtless treatment of earth into psychic journeys in which we will “burst…into a many-petaled big-headed sunflower,” turns a gaze at the moon into a memento mori, “…how the moon looks at you—crazy, you are with the moon!”/ Crazy because someday you won’t be,” and suggests to her lucky readers that one day “we will know/the wisdom/of other/animals….” Hanging On In A Pear-Shaped World is Jackson’s guide book of spells that will make it happen.

—Greg Kosmicki, Founder, The Backwaters Press

Mary Strong Jackson is a poet, and in this labor of love, she asks the reader to work alongside her, to carry a share of the load. We must peel the fruit for the mother-daughter relationships, lost loves, lost faith, found places where love and sorrow interlock. Those yin and yang patterns begin to emerge as longer pieces are spelled with haikus and collective memories are joined with personal reflections. Jackson’s poems cut to the core of this pear-shaped world and implore us to examine its seeds.

–Deb Carpenter-Nolting, singer, songwriter, poet, and author of Grizzly Attack in Colorado and Nature’s Beauty Kit.

“I much appreciated the smart and sassy tone of voice behind Mary Strong Jackson’s poems in this collection. I also appreciated her concern with social issues. She laughs, scoffs, relishes in word play, and uses an ironic voice to critique the foibles and failings, making modern life less livable. Her collection is a temperature check on the American dream. “ 

—Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, 6th poet laureate of Santa Fe, NM