Torn Mind
by Jessica Jacobs
Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s annual Miami Book Fair preview. Every day, we’re featuring a video by a woman-identifying writer appearing at Miami Book Fair 2024. Enjoy this taste of poetry, sponsored by Miami Book Fair and SWWIM. We look forward to seeing you at the Fair!
Appearance at Miami Book Fair 2024: Jessica Jacobs, Sunday, 11/24/2024, 4 pm, Room 8302
Transcript of poem Avivah Zornberg notes וַיֵּ֣שֶׁב יַעֲקֹ֔ב Vayeshev Yaakov (And Jacob settled)— the first words of this parshah—point to Jacob’s desire for יִשּׁוּב הַדַּעַת yishuv ha-da’at (a settled mind), as opposed to הַדַּעַת טֵירוּף tiruf ha-da’at (a torn mind). A rabbit savaged in the field, my mind is that torn, that scattered. All dog-paddle day, all surface and screens, I sink sometimes but bob back up. Someone, somewhere needs an answer. Not bold enough to run from destiny, I let it seep from me instead. So though he shivered in the briny dark, krill wreathing his ankles, I find I am jealous of Jonah. Like Nineveh, I am a city in need of saving. Like Jonah, I have words stuck in the scrim of my ribs and the whale seems an ideal retreat— three days, three nights at a depth I can barely imagine. The whale, both vessel and message: to settle into time like it does into water. To patient beside the rumbling pump room of the heart. The quiet there like God—nowhere and everywhere at once. The holiness of that wholeness. Of what rises to meet it.
Jessica Jacobs is the author of unalone, poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis (Four Way Books, March 2024); Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books, 2019), one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of the Year, winner of the Devil’s Kitchen and Goldie Awards, and a finalist for the Brockman-Campbell, American Fiction, and Julie Suk Book Awards; Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press, 2015), a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, winner of the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; and co-author of Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books/Penguin RandomHouse). She is the founder and executive director of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry.
"Torn Mind" from unalone © 2024 by Jessica Jacobs. Appears with permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.
12/12 / Poetry Reading and Conversation with visiting poet-in-residence Nicole Cooley + local writer Caroline Cabrera / The Gallery at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7-8:30 pm EST / Free
Two workshops remain in our Workshop Series--SWWIM Lessons: From Prompt to Placement: “Navigating Your Manuscript with Alexandra Lytton Regalado – What I learned from reading for (and winning) the National Poetry Series” on 11/12 (register here) and “Surfing Submittable with Jen Karetnick – Keeping your head above water in the poetry submissions process” on 12/10 (register here). Price: $80/workshop. Time: 7:00–9:00 PM (EST). Where: Zoom.
Note: SWWIM Every Day is now accepting poetry translations for publication consideration. Please see swwim.org/submit for the full guidelines.
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Reading this over and over. It is a comfort.