Unalone by Jessica Jacobs Review by Deborah Bacharach

unalone by Jessica Jacobs

Review by Deborah Bacharach

Publisher: Four Way Books

Publication Date: March 15, 2024

ISBN: 9781954245822

Pages: 208

Resee, Remix, Remake

Take nothing for granted. In her second full length collection, unalone, Jessica Jacobs re-envisions every line in Genesis. Of Jacob wrestling with an angel, Jacobs writes: “In your arms, all the promises you’ve yet to keep, all you’ve done that shames you. But what is wrestling if not an embrace?” Struggle re-seen, transformed into comfort. This is poetry not just grounded in the text, but deeply committed to exploring its big themes—our relationship to God, how the world should be, and how we should live in the world. 

One path Jacobs takes through Genesis is the literal words of Genesis—the Hebrew words. In recounting the story of Joseph thrown into the pit by his brothers, Jacobs writes of Joseph:                 

	                                                          For
                 the first time he knew לְהִתְפַּלֵל le’hitpalel (to pray)
                 is reflexive, meaning an action done
                 to oneself, literally to judge yourself. 

With this syntactical analysis, Jacobs takes the reader beyond the English translation “pray” into a new understanding of Jacob’s emotional and spiritual experience. In analyzing the linguistic positioning, connotations, etymology and music of the Hebrew words, she is both acting with the joy and expertise of a poet and joining herself to a long tradition of Biblical scholars. But she doesn’t stop with the what this word means; she keeps going to the metaphoric implications of the word:

                 And for the rest of his life,
                 he was a man putting himself
                 back together. A man with this pit
                 inside him, with the knowledge
                 that everyone he met carried
                 a similar cistern: an emptiness
                 that doubles as a reservoir. 

The Hebrew words are like stepping stones taking her and the reader to a deep well of understanding.

Jacobs uses not just her intellect to peer into the words but her imagination to peer into what is not written. Genesis gets Noah on and off the ark but offers no word about what happens there. In Jacobs’ imagination, Noah’s wife would like to tell us exactly what happened: 

                 With an otter placid as a stole across his shoulders,
                 instead of talking,
                 he lived in his hands, picking
                 nits; troughing food and water, always more water; tending,
                 tending to every walking, creeping, winged thing, to all beings
                 but her—never lying beside her, never tasting
                 the taste of sleep, his tongue
                 withered to a husk. 

The images are concrete and specific—”otter,” “nits”. The verbs engage—“troughing,” “withered to a husk.” The reader can see Noah going about his daily tasks. The vividness of the language brings a world to life. 

Just as importantly, this world comes to life because of another technique Jacobs employs, persona. Noah’s wife has strong feelings about what she describes. The animals might be placid with Noah, but his wife resents his “never lying beside her,” abandoning her to these duties. Here, and in many of the poems, Jacobs’ use of persona gives voice to characters the Bible holds in silence. 

But not just those that are silent. There are nine poems called “And God speaks” creating a strong current through the book. In these poems, God speaks cattle and their “hot green breath” into being. And God speaks a covenant into being. We learn that God’s voice can be “like the rattan tap of the cat upflipping / the laundry lid” or come to us “in a blaze of autumn.” We also learn what God’s voice means to the speaker:

                 in a sound beyond
                 sounding: A ready well

                 in the driest desert.
                 Your mother’s palm,

                 just before sleep,
                 cupping your small cheek. The still

                 small voice you’ve known
                 all your life. You’d always

                 assumed it was yours
                 alone, just like

                 you’d always assumed
                            you were alone. 

These images of comfort, connection and insight come near the end of the book. For much of unalone the speaker struggles with what she wants from the Bible and from God. So, the book is a journey, not just an analysis.

I enjoy a good intellectual analysis like Jacobs does with the Hebrew words, and my world opens when she brings her imagination as a lens for Genesis. But these poems completely grabbed my heart when the speaker revealed what the stories of Genesis mean to her as she does in “P.O.T.S. Prayer”:

                 God of Rebecca, who
                 leaned over a well and the water rose
                 to meet her, I too want that force
                 of connection, with no other demands
                 patching in. On good days, I can hear
                 these ancestors breathing, each offering
                 a new way to pray. Other days, like this day,
                 when every breath brings another
                 diversion, the best I can hope for
                 is some divine dial tone, the stressed/unstressed
                 hum, reassuring that the line is open,
                 that when I’m ready, I can make a call.  

The speaker starts grounded in a Biblical story—Rebecca trying to get water from the well—then moves to what that moment can mean not just literally but metaphorically: “I too want that force / of connection.” And then with P.O.T.S. (plain old telephone service) the poem takes a huge leap into the modern era. Jacobs uses that telephone imagery—the open line, the dial tone—to draw an emotional connection between these ancient stories and our lives.

I kept trying to start this review with anything but the word “Genesis.” I was afraid I was going to scare away the reader who has no interest in the first book of the Bible, thinks a deep dive into a religious text is not for them, or who does not want to see the text through a new lens. And maybe, if you are one of those people, you aren’t the reader for unalone. But, if you are someone who wants to understand these Biblical stories in a modern context, who wrestles with ethical questions and our relationship to the divine, who just appreciates a good remix, and/or who likes poetry where the music, imagery, and voice grab you and keep you, I strongly urge you to read this book. 

Deborah Bacharach is the author of two full length poetry collections Shake & Tremor (Grayson Books, 2021) and After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her poems, book reviews and essays have been published in One Art, New Letters, Poet Lore, and The Writer’s Chronicle among many others, and she has received a Pushcart prize honorable mention. She is currently a poetry reader for SWWIM and Whale Road Review and a mentor with PEN America. She lives in Seattle. Find out more about her at DeborahBacharach.com

.Jessica Jacobs is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books, 2019), one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of the Year, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen and Goldie Awards, and a finalist for the Brockman-Campbell, American Fiction, and Julie Suk Book Awards; and Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press, 2015), a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, winner of the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; and is the co-author of Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books/Penguin RandomHouse, 2020). She is the founder and executive director of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry.

4 December 2024