The Body of All Things by Rebecca Jamieson

“Rebecca Jamieson‘s AMAZING first collection The Body of All Things describes the body in stillness, the body under duress, the body in touch with the Midwestern and Northwestern landscapes, the body lonely or diminished, the body in joy and in sorrow, then the body beyond the body, the ghost body. “A house that burns down so slowly nobody notices.” The speakers in these poems, poems in prose and poems in verse, often receive the world’s surface so closely to get at what lies beyond and around the surface, as in the poem “Labor”: “Some days I run my finger over the blue flower I embroidered in satin stitch when I was seven. Other days I get past it as quickly as possible. Hidden memories, sweet-bitter, raveled pieces of red and blue yarn holding the whole thing together.” Jamieson’s words hold all of our bodies together in invisible and visible ways. I’m telling all my friends about this book!”

–Jay Ponteri

“In these vulnerable and wise poems Rebecca Jamieson probes the complexities of family, growing up, and the sheer mystery of being an embodied consciousness in a world that is at once beautiful and painful. “I value the bitter/ medicines, the spiky plants/ with poison flowers,” she tells us, giving us poems that are themselves curative and astringent in their intimacy and hard-won insights. This, then, is a book which arrives at a deep “yes” on its journey from innocence to experience: “Some yeses/ come in a wild voice, others/ are very quiet…” she says. Rebecca Jamieson’s voice has the ability to contain both, often in the same poem. And after experiencing such poems we feel like we might know not only this poet but even ourselves a little better if we’re brave enough to follow where her questions lead.”

–Ger Killeen

“Rebecca Jamieson‘s poems travel to the dark heart of the natural world and find there remembrance and smudges of grace.  No matter how shadowed an encounter, the speaker’s honesty forges redemption.”

–Perrin Kerns