Gesture

In these often quiet but probing poems, Nancy Jakobsson illuminates lives and worlds--her own life and the lives of those she has counseled in their losses in her work as a grief therapist, the natural world she walks through, and the imaginative world she encounters deeply through works of art. Her attention is steady, whether she is looking at her own roots, the stories of those she has come to know, birds winging over a river path in winter, or Andy Goldsworthy's stones. She is alive to the gestures of each thing she encounters, and each becomes a source of astonishment. Life is here, witnessed with compassion. The mountains are here, counterpointing the sorrows. Works of art are here, singing of solace and delight.Veronica Patterson