Blurber
June 14th, 2013
Here is the blurb I wrote for Rosetta Ballew-Jennings’ debut book Is the room, forthcoming from Jaded Ibis Press:
Is the room makes poetry out of dream logic and uncertainty, whether it’s a location only specified as “left of where you are” or a phone message from a woman who can’t say why she’s calling. Rosetta Ballew-Jennings’ writing explores stark and disconcerting fragments of a domestic life where even household doors and halls don’t fit together quite right, and where a conversation about cereal and milk shifts abruptly to “I don’t love you, / or something like that.” With mysterious lyricism and echoes of Jean Valentine, this book heeds the author’s plea and applies it to the reader: “Please do not forget / what I am afraid of.”