Good Job by JESSICA FARQUHAR

A book of double-takes, the poet wills herself and her readers to take notice, to find and make meaning, and to find permission and courage to un-make modes of thinking and being that fail us. Amidst the tyranny of money and technology, in a time in which “[t]he end of the world is taking so long,” in which Siri (and thus perhaps we, too) “doesn’t know the difference” between “Good morning, good money,” poetry might activate the glitch that disrupts domesticating systems in order to re-feral the mind and unburden us of our tameness. The work of living might well benefit from nurturing our capacities to experience amazement and awe. The oft-staggered couplets of Jessica Farquhar’s Good Job enact a back and forth the words and images also negotiate, testing out competing propositions that poetry is a balm versus that poetry is language, inflamed. The poet’s refusal to find resolution where there is none is part of the good work (if also the enduring ache) of these poems.

–Kristi Maxwell, Author of Wide Ass of Night

Reading Jessica Farquhar’s Good Job is like walking into a motorcycle shop run by a Jungian doula. A little deadpan, a bit witchy, the speaker in these poems doles out frank assessments—“I cannot keep my opinions // to myself,” she admits. “I am pretty good at breathing.” Such directness, however, never precludes mystery. These are work songs, but labor in all forms requires too its dreams and moonscapes. Here is the work of writing, of birth, of mothering, the work that leads to “good money” and to the magic and disasters strewn along the road to a good life. I would follow this music, this voice anywhere. “I’d rather / ask for nothing than / permission,” Farquhar writes. Thank god she doesn’t ask.
–Corey Van Landingham, Author of Reader, I