Poet
Jessica Greenbaum
Jessica Greenbaum
(United States of America, 1957)
© Jessica Greenbaum
Biography
Jessica Greenbaum is a poet, essayist, and teacher, as well as the author of two books: Inventing Difficulty (2000) which won the Gerald Cable Prize, and The Two Yvonnes (2012) which was chosen by Paul Muldoon for Princeton’s Series of Contemporary Poets.
While getting her MFA in Houston, Greenbaum spent time as a researcher and reporter. Asked about her stint in journalism in an interview for the Katonah Poetry Series, she said, “Overall, I felt I was learning how the dots were connected in the world – and behind the world’s facade.” Greenbaum’s poems often connect the dots in surprising ways. In ‘Green Permanent’, the speaker’s friend goes searching for tools in his deceased father’s workroom. The poem yields lush descriptions:
the see-through brick
in which he drilled holes for the array of drill bits themselves,
their swirled metal tops imitating a skyline of onion domes and
tapered gothic towers.
in which he drilled holes for the array of drill bits themselves,
their swirled metal tops imitating a skyline of onion domes and
tapered gothic towers.
We are also privy to the way something as small as spoiled tubes of green paint can elucidate the power a single body can have, both in life, and in it’s negative:
And when you opened it you saw small tubes
of paint, now just mud without his attention, you said, holding both
the power of what we do, and the sadness that it has to end.
of paint, now just mud without his attention, you said, holding both
the power of what we do, and the sadness that it has to end.
Spaar also said of The Two Yvonnes that, “Greenbaum daringly floats her subjects over one another, and with this stylistic risk conveys a vision of the self that is at once coherent and essentially implicated in everything it is not.” This “floating” creates a density in Greenbaum’s often compact poems, through which she finds epiphany amidst the everyday. A difficult phone call, memories of an estranged friend – all are occasions for finding something to buoy us against “the daily / herald of our powerlessness” (from ‘For You Today’):
and after we hung up I looked out the window
to see the top of the bare January trees spotlit to silvery red,
massive but made from the thinnest
twigs at the ends of the branches at the ends of the limbs
they were waving and shining in a light
like no other and left only to them.
– from ‘I Had Just Hung Up From Talking to You’
to see the top of the bare January trees spotlit to silvery red,
massive but made from the thinnest
twigs at the ends of the branches at the ends of the limbs
they were waving and shining in a light
like no other and left only to them.
– from ‘I Had Just Hung Up From Talking to You’
Greenbaum is the poetry editor for upstreet and lives in Brooklyn. In 2014 she received a master’s degree in social work, and in 2015 she received a fellowship from the NEA.
© PoetryFoundation.org
BibliographyPoetry
The Two Yvonnes, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2012
Inventing Difficulty, Silverfish Review Press, Eugene, Oregon, 2000
Links
‘Where Shall I Begin? Inspiration and Instruction In Poetry’s First Lines’, alongside audio, by Jessica Greenbaum, PoetryFoundation.org
‘Whole Earth Poem Catalog: Is there any blank space left for a new poem, old subjects?’ by Jessica Greenbaum, PoetryFoundation.org
Poetry magazine podcast, May 2013, PoetryFoundation.org
Audio of ‘The Storm-struck Tree’ at PoetryFoundation.org
‘Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry by Tom Andrews and Jessica Greenbaum’ by Lisa Russ Spaar, Los Angeles Review of Books
Interview with Greenbaum by Andy Kuhn, Katonah Poetry Series
Poems
Poems of Jessica Greenbaum
Sponsors
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère