The Letter by Greg Jensen

Time, space, landscape, psyche: The Letter arrives without explanation, oracular and improvident, intimate and universal. Part meditation, part heedless plunge. I admire the way the language turns back into itself, following the windings of momentary thought, in harmony and contradiction, probing the reaches of the self. Check out this mixed-genre solo! 

—Joseph Millar,  Author of Shine (Carnegie Mellon 2024) 

In The Letter, Greg Jensen has created a form—much like Marvin Bell’s Dead Man poems—that connects us to the entirety of human experience. The poems shift seamlessly from the metaphysics of “the existence of non-existence” to a postmark in Bismark, North Dakota, from “the letter is a continent coming into view” to “the waste of a body on a white sheet.”  The letters invite us into a hospital room awaiting a hearing of our sanity and into a desk drawer with a Zippo lighter and an expired passport. They encompass magic and disappointment, nicotine, and onions. Throughout, Jensen’s understated humor glimmers, reminding us that, “The difference between a good day and a bad day is one word.” 

—Jeanne Morel,  Author of I See My Way to Some Partial Results (Ravenna Press), Jackpot (Bottlecap Press), and That Crossing Is Not Automatic (Tarpaulin Sky Press) 

From the first poem in this brilliant collection, the reader understands that Jensen has tapped into an endlessly generative subject matter, symbol, and obsession. These poems captivate the reader in the same way that “the letter” captivates the “you” that these poems address. And alongside that “you,” we experience familiar yet aporic senses of intimacy and elusiveness, resignation and yearning, meaning and emptiness. As we read and re-read these poems, we are drawn “inside a life that has kept you waiting” and recognize – painfully and uncannily  – that life in waiting is our own.  

 —Anthony Warnke,  Author of Super Worth It (Newfound)