I Call You Light by Jennifer Dykema

In Jennifer Dykema’s loving collection, I Call You Light, she writes “Do not despise the/small, seemingly insignificant.” As you wander within these poems crafted with intelligence and heart, Dykema will invite you to pause and realize that it is the very being, mysterious being of those mis-named “little things” that create any soulful life we inhabit. Jennifer Dykema preserves in her poems what photographer Dan Winter’s recognized: “Countless potential masterpieces happen each moment the world over and go unphotographed.”

–Jack Ridl, author of Practicing to Walk Like a Heron, Broken Symmetry, and Losing Season

“These poems are exquisite. Clear lines and fresh phrases reveal the sensual, difficult, tender landscape of new motherhood. Dykema is a gifted young poet and these are memorable and nuanced poems.”

–Heather Sellers, author most recently of award-winning memoir, You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know

“The poet Christian Wiman writes that poetry is an integral part of a spiritual life because it “preserves both aspects of spiritual experience, because to name is to praise and lose in one instant.” In I Call You Light, Jennifer Dykema explores this paradox, most often through the lens of motherhood, which is itself a kind of spiritual experience. She knows well that inviting love into one’s life is to invite loss, too. It is not at all surprising, then, to find so many of these wonderful poems using the rhetoric of scripture: blessings, curses, and prayers of intercession appear throughout the collection. Jennifer contemplates relatively minor moments of grief, like hitting a goose in a parking lot, and deeply sobering life events, like miscarriage, with equal honesty, and it’s heartening to see, when faced with such paradoxes and after acknowledging the darkness, that in the end, her vote is firmly cast in favor of hope. “Only the creative mind can make use of hope,” the poet Jericho Brown has written. Jennifer Dykema is one of those people, and she wields hope well. Read these poems and be heartened by their beauty.”

–Carrie Jerrell, author of After the Revival

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]