ISBN Paper: 978-1945588266/ $15.95
Four Way Books / March 4, 2019
- Winner, Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award, Southern Illinois University
- Winner, Goldie Award in Poetry, Golden Crown Literary Society
- Honorable Mention, Brockman-Campbell Book Award, NC Poetry Society
- Finalist, Julie Suk Award, Jacar Press
- Finalist, American Fiction Award in Contemporary Poetry, American Book Fest
- Finalist, Eric Hoffer Award in Poetry
- One of Library Journal‘s 10 Best Poetry Books of the Year
- One of Orion Magazine‘s 10 Essential Collections for Pride Month
Four Way Books / IndieBound / Amazon
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For review copies or promotional materials, contact Clarissa Long, Publicity Director at Four Way Books: publicity@fourwaybooks.com
A memoir-in-poems about coming of age in Florida and the complexities and joys of early marriage between the poet and her wife
—Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things
“I’m totally certain Jessica Jacobs’ book is going to save someone’s life. Probably more than one person but I’m thinking of the one person who, like me when I was first coming out, needed a book like this so much. Like Marilyn Hacker’s Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons and Minnie Bruce Pratt’s S/He before it, Jacobs’ poetry collection/memoir in verse tells of love and everyday life in a way everyone deserves to hear about, but many of us never do. Yes, the world is wider than it was when I was 16 and dying for a book like this, but there’s still so much work to do and so many stories that need to be told. This book would have helped me know it doesn’t necessarily ‘get better,’ but it sure can get great in unimaginable ways. It would have helped me envision new ways to be alive. An honest, activist, real world dream of a book. A treasure.”
—Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Rocket Fantastic
“From the murky waters of Florida to a rolling blackout in New York City to the windblown fields of the Midwest, Jessica Jacobs refuses to ‘confine our darkness to the dark,’ expertly illuminating the mysterious topographies of love, desire, and longing. Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going is a collection whose title suggests—and whose pages deliver—an evocative journey. Though, by the time you’re done, you’ll likely want to stay right where you are: in the vision of this gifted poet, in the glow of these stunning poems.”
—Matthew Olzmann, Contradictions in the Design
Reviews
“In language limpid, forthright, and involving, Jacobs relates the story of a life: growing up different in swampy Florida; discovering one’s sexuality and self; learning that finding and sustaining real love is both wondrous and hard. Her voice is immediately captivating and remarkably variable.” —Library Journal, Best Poetry Books of 2019
“Sometimes we caution writers against using the greater-than-human world as an example of what it means to be human. …And, yet, sometimes the world does seem to speak to us, to speak through us, in deeply charged ways. That’s part of how metaphor works. A poet takes an example from the real world, lays it against a story from her own life, and lets the marriage of the two create a new reality that, rather than erasing previous realities, magnifies what has been there all along. Page after page, Jessica Jacobs does just that in Take Me With You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books). What a delight it is to read the world through her eyes.”—Camille Dungy, Orion Magazine‘s 10 Essential Collections for Pride Month
“Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going is a love letter to and beyond Florida, a slow burn story of desire and homage.” —Sara Gregory, Lambda Literary Review
“She is contemplative and balances these pensive poems in a way that is both intentional and organic, allowing the reader to, as the title begs, be taken along on a journey regardless of its destination. We are moved through the various stages of becoming, of leaving the familiar and finding the pieces of ourselves in sunsets and dotted white lines, in the worries we hold for our loved ones, in the peace that comes from our subconscious sigh as we cross the threshold into the homes we have made for ourselves….Jessica Jacobs’s poems in Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going echo the underlying human desire to find and experience happiness while never wanting to reach its limit.”—Stephanie Trott, Southern Humanities Review
“Like Rilke, Jacobs finds in her loving a higher spiritual calling. … In a recent interview with Tom Bosworth in The Adroit Journal, Jacobs says that falling in love helped to push her out of “navel-gazing” to the “larger questions” and that she began studying Midrash, “a collection of rabbinic writings about the Torah,” and then tellingly: “I wouldn’t have reached this place of wondering without the space that love opened inside me [.]” Even the most cynical among us can see and feel that love has indeed opened a space not only for this poet but for us as well. I invite you to go on the journey of this book with this gifted poet and to look forward attentively, as I do, to her work to come.”—Dana Roeser, Tupelo Quarterly
“A great achievement of Take Me with You: the book reads partially as a narrative sequence, yet the poems stand as individual feats of lyric composition. To accomplish both, to ensure the parts are as strong as the whole, to compose poems with particular strengths not contingent upon the sequence, is an accomplishment worth noting. “—Christian Wessels, Kenyon Review
“Jacobs calls her collection a memoir in poetry. Take Me with You, Wherever You are Going plumbs both memoir and love poem traditions with poems that hold heart and memory in hand. This creates an intimacy between poet and reader. Not only is the poet the speaker, but the journey to find and fall in love gives the poems a heightened emotional urgency. The reader is along for a ride of sensual writing that leaps from New York to Santa Fe to Big Sur, California, to a farm in Massachusetts to the broad sweep of the Midwest.” — Heidi Seaborn, The Adroit Journal
“There is an un-silencing of queer southernness that is desperately needed. Needed as in: life or death. … Every now and then there are words that allow us to soak in all of who we are, all at once like that; in that moment, the space we need forms around us. Jessica Jacobs’ Take Me With You, Wherever You’re Going does exactly that.”—Alesha Dawson, Screen Door Review
“A powerful autobiography of friendship, love, marriage.”—Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books
“My favorite line about marriage used to be Gregory Corso’s attitude filled ‘Should I get married? Should I be good?’…But as I moved through Jacobs’ marriage, I realized that her title Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going was pretty much what I said to my husband in our wedding vows. These poems help me understand that commitment more deeply and joyfully.”—Deborah Bacharach, Asheville Poetry Review
“I admire Jacobs’ talent and lyricism whatever her subject matter. …even this unpartnered lesbian poet, lover of cats and solitude, is not immune to the weight of consummate love. And would it be possible for me, for anyone, to resist a lover who says, ‘you fill my heart with koi / and dahlias’?”—Risa Denenberg, Drizzle Review
“The poems are fearless in spelling out and unpacking their metaphors in pursuit of clarity at the literal level…[yet] they manage to end in startlingly and beautifully unexpected places, which also feel inevitable—that ultimate reading experience of ‘I couldn’t’ve put it like that, but it is like that.'”—Catherine Carter, North Carolina Literary Review