It's Not That Deep

Jessica Moll’s debut collection, It’s Not That Deep, brims with richly imaginative poems. Dressed as dialogues, they fuse images, metaphor, and music with the charge of dramatic tension. A couple’s conversations, which occur as they engage in intimate activities, such as making soup, sitting near a campfire, and patching a bicycle tube, reveal the distances between them even as they attempt to forge connection.

Moll’s poems leap associatively across the stones of alienation and longing. Between the torque of estrangement and tenderness, transcendence always finds its way in. Each turn yields surprise, creating bursts of energy and humor:

I have the feeling this is about more than fixing a flat, he said.

I know, I said. I was speaking about the metaphorical punctured tube, I said.

Everything is a metaphor to you, he said. Even I am a metaphor to you, he said.

Well, I adore metaphors, I said. So if you’re a metaphor, I adore you, I said.

But I’m not nice, he said.

Metaphors are most interesting when they’re not nice, I said. That’s why a metaphor is a perfect metaphor for you.

These poems twist and stretch with cleverness and depth. Just when you’re grounded, the poems will spin again, invite you back in for another round.