Advance Praise

Ripe
Roy Jacobstein

"Roy Jacobstein has a canny intellect and a deep empathetic imagination. He writes here from the very midst of life—as a poet, a doctor, a Jew, a father, a son pierced by memories of his lost midwestern childhood. We are beholden to what we love, and Ripe is a first book of full maturity, of bittersweet experience and deep fruition, of earthly plenitude."
—Edward Hirsch

"With near-surgical precision, this fine book confronts the mortal facts of flesh with courage and humility while also performing improvisational celebrations of life's amazing gifts."
—Dean Young

"From the ripeness of death to the ripeness of the birth canal, with wit and rue, with tenderness and rigor and cleansing disenchantment, Roy Jacobstein writes a poetry of blessing for our time. Nothing in Roy Jacobstein's large experience—a union barbershop in mid-century Detroit, the obstetrics ward in a Cambodian refugee camp, the 'befuddlement' of childhood, the wisdom of the nursing child, the lab, the boardroom, the luminous common heritage of the printed page—nothing appears to have been lost on him or, thanks to him, on us. In a world beset with loss, this exhilarating, mindful, compassionate book allows us the dream of wholeness. It is tonic for the soul. It is—of how many books can this be said?—from poem to poem and vista to vista, good company."
—Linda Gregerson