Between the Lines: unalone
unalone by Jessica Jacobs: A Renowned Poet’s Invitation to the Book of Genesis
Part of Between the Lines: Author Conversations from The Library of JTS
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
7:00–8:30 p.m. ET
Live at JTS and Livestreamed
3080 Broadway (at 122nd Street)
New York City
Jessica Jacobs joins JTS for a discussion of her recent book of poetry, an engagement with religious texts as an act of devotion to living fully in the world’s complexity.
Deeply personal and yet universal in its truths, unalone draws on the Book of Genesis as a living document whose stories, wisdom, and ethical knots can engage us more fully with our own lives—whatever your religious tradition or spiritual beliefs. In this stunning and ambitious book, Jacobs reminds us that all poetry serves as a kind of prayer—a recognition of beauty, a spoken bid for connection, a yearning toward an understanding that might better guide us through our days. Whether conversing with the sacred texts she reads or writing from her subjects’ perspectives, Jacobs navigates an abundance of experiences: growing up queer, embracing one’s sexuality, reversing roles as the adult child of aging parents, wrestling with religious history and the imposed roles of womanhood, exploring how the past foreshadows our current climate crisis, and revisiting the blush of new love while cataloging the profound, though more familiar, joys of a long relationship.
About the Author
Jessica Jacobs is the author of unalone, poems in conversation with Genesis (Four Way Books, March 2024); Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books, 2019), one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of the Year and winner of the Devil’s Kitchen and Goldie Awards; and Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press, 2015), winner of the New Mexico Book Award 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). Jessica is the founder and executive director of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry.
Praise for unalone
“Speaking to Jew and Gentile, believer and nonbeliver, this poetry collection makes our hungers radiant. Highly recommended.”
—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal, *Starred Review*
“Like our matriarch Serah, the Torah’s first poet, Jessica Jacobs opens the Book of Genesis to her readers like a gate ‘with an easy latch and well-oiled hinges.’ She takes the time to notice, allowing readers to hear ‘a sound they know so well’ as though they’ve never heard it. Jacobs is this generation’s immaculate poet of the tents, taking us back to ourselves, fully. She amplifies ‘the still small voice you’ve known all your life,’ so through her deep wisdom you remember you are unalone.”
—Rabbi Burton Visotzky, author of Reading the Book: Making the Bible a Timeless Text
