Books by Jacqueline Jules
Manna in the Morning is, quite simply, a lovely book.
As she revisits holy texts, Jacqueline Jules gracefully connects ancient
stories with modern times, gaining insights into her own quandaries and gently
suggesting paths through which all of us may traverse our conflicts and crises.
Go ahead and feast on the spiritual sustenance that Manna in the Morning provides.
You won’t regret it. —Erika Dreifus, author of Birthright: Poems and Quiet
Americans: Stories
Jules explores contemporary faith with nuance and sensitivity, braiding together the ancient world and twenty-first century. She’s particularly interested in the roles women play in the Biblical texts and brings a lively feminist sensibility to her poems: “I’m Miriam/holding a tambourine,/dancing in the desert, grateful/for the smallest excuse/to sing.” —Katherine E. Young, author of Day of the Border Guards, Poet Laureate Emerita, Arlington, VA
Read review of Manna in the Morning at Cultural Daily
2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize Winner
"In the apocryphal story told about Yitzhak Perlman
during his concert at Lincoln Center in 1995 when one of the four violin
strings suddenly tore, and he proceeded to reconceive and play the entire work
with three remaining strings, he said that 'sometimes it is the artist’s task
to find out how much music you can make with what you have left.' If ever there
were a work that explores the aftermath of loss, it is this powerful and highly
original collection by Jacqueline Jules."—Myra Sklarew, Author of Lithuania:
New & Selected Poems
"What plucks at the heart strings of Jacqueline Jules'
intense poems of Itzhak Perlman's Broken String is a dialectic between faith
and loss where science mediates. . . . The poet dares to challenge Jean-Paul
Sartre on despair and suggests to the physical therapist 'better to tease a
tiger/ than poke a pain.' . . . This is a smart and smarting journey through
the human condition."—Karren L. Alenier, author of The Anima of Paul
Bowles
"After the shock of initial loss, when grief becomes a
daily companion, we must learn, as Jacqueline Jules wisely writes, to find
music in our crippled instruments. Like Jean-Paul Sartre, we 'cross that cruel
river'; like Isaac Newton, our personal math proves 'we are vulnerable to
falling objects.'"—Kim Roberts, founding editor of Beltway Poetry
Quarterly
To purchase a copy, visit the publisher's website at Evening Street Press
Itzhak Perlman's Broken String is now available on Kindle
Stronger Than Cleopatra is a poetry collection in
which the reader accompanies Jacqueline Jules on a heart-wrenching journey
through grief to come out on the other side, embracing a new life, one changed
forever. Like an immediate close friend, the reader pads along on a trail with
these thirty poems reflecting all the while on his or her own choices. Stronger
than Cleopatra was published by ELJ Publications.
“Jacqueline Jules’ visceral howl at the power of the
seemingly random universe and passage through the five stages of grief will
rattle your emotions and capture your heart.
Here is a collection of poems as fragments of light amid the darkness.
That she captures that light to share with us is the true marvel.” —Richard
Peabody, editor Gargoyle Magazine
“Don’t think of it as a poetry collection —this is a memoir,
where the rawness of the situation can only exude in these small perfect bits
of lyric. A journey you’ll want to consume and then consume again. Magical.”
—Hildie S. Block author of “People” and editor of the anthology Not What I Expected
“If half of all marriages end in widowhood, Stronger Than Cleopatra is a manual for
how to go on.” —Pamela Ehrenberg, author of Ethan,
Suspended and Tillmon County Fire
Field Trip to the Museum
is a thematic collection in the voice of an eighteen-year-old girl
examining her life during weekly sessions with a psychologist. In 25 narrative
poems, Jules tells the moving story of a young girl who travels away from
self-destructive behavior to a new acceptance of herself. Field Trip to the Museum was published by Finishing Line Press.
"Field Trip to the Museum is a powerful, yet graceful
collection of poems that express the emotional turmoil of youth. With hopeful verses such as 'An Oyster's
Luck,' Jules traces the path toward adulthood." —Margarita Engle, Newbery Honor-Winning
author of The Surrender Tree
"Jacqueline Jules’ poems surprise and delight. Homing
in on the specific, they illuminate what’s most human in us all." – Barbara Ann Porte, author of Something
Terrible Happened and He’s Sorry, She’s Sorry, They’re Sorry, Too.
"Jacqueline Jules demonstrates her versatility as a
writer with this collection of compelling YA poems, several of which can serve
as mentor texts for teen poets." —Janet S. Wong, poetry anthologist and
author of Good Luck Gold, A Suitcase of Seaweed, The Rainbow Hand, and Behind
the Wheel.
