In Letters from Spickert Knob, the wise and talented Michael Jackman builds an ode to love. His warm affectionate paean to a new relationship takes a DIY approach, literally insulating pipes, sealing the foundation, reinforcing the deck, and (while limping on crutches) planting seedlings on a homestead that provides a luscious parallel to the union being built. From sex to eating olives and raising chickens, the poet can hear “the homestead inhaling.”If the gate is lopsided, the ripe persimmons still fall, and even when things blow over in storms, Jackman understands that “if everything becomes unbuilt/some things can be built again.” Here’s that rich, mature love that anyone hopes for now displayed, often in couplets (of course!), by Jackman’s splendid construction. – Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst: Poems and A Friend Sails in on a Poem
“These gentle “letters” ring true; they are tender and personal without sentimentality. A sense of place pervades these honest, understated poems. Michael Jackman succeeds at an interesting task. Michael Jackman successfully describes two parallel kinds of work: joining the human world with the natural world, and maintaining love in the face of ambivalence and mutability.” -Kristin Zimet, author of Take in My Arms the Dark
“In these intimate and reflective poems, we encounter a homesteader who finds beauty and something of the sacred in the daily rhythms of his life….” -Nancy Chen Long, author of Wider than the Sky
Michael Jackman, a writer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, has published poetry, fiction, nonfiction, feature journalism, and scholarship. For 17 years before his retirement, he taught on the writing faculty at Indiana University Southeast. Jackman earned an MFA in poetry from Spalding University’s Low-Residency Program and an MA in fiction and literature from the University of Louisville.
Previous publications include Carbon Culture Review, Gyroscope Literary Review, Hospital Drive, Louisville Review, Nebo, New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, The North Meridian Review, Orange Blossom Review, Postcard Poems and Prose, Panoply, Spank the Carp and others. This is his first published poetry book.
Format: Print book, 32 pages, 8-1/2″ x 5-1/2″
ISBN: 978-1-7349589-5-9
Published by Marian University Dept. of Media, Communication and Design