Release Date: August 31, 2024
Size: 6 x 9 / 70 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-57869-178-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024941268
Booksellers and Libraries: Order Info Here or at Ingram.

SYNOPSIS

Jackson’s rhythmic and musical poems merge love, beauty, justice, and the lived Black experience in America. 

My Specific Awe and Wonder is a collection of new and selected poems that Reuben described as “a love letter to Vermont” with “all the potholes visible.” Here are poems about his experience living in, loving, and leaving Vermont, alongside poems of his childhood, his DC neighborhood, and his travels—both physical and metaphorical. Plus the Kelly Donaldson persona poems that tell it like it is. This collection, Jackson's third, includes poems that he called his “strongest, most evocative work.” Jackson (1956-2024) left behind handwritten drafts and voicemails, which have been transcribed and compiled posthumously to keep his voice and legacy of poetry alive.

With an introduction by poet and activist LN Bethea, and a tribute poem by Rajnii Eddins, author of Their Names Are Mine.

Proceeds from the sale of this work will benefit a scholarship in his name at the University of the District Columbia for students interested in poetry and/or jazz, currently set up as a Go Fund Me page here; and The Reuben Jackson Poetry Prize at Howard University, set up as a fundraising page through The Academy of American Poets here.

Praise

“On the page, Reuben Jackson is embracing.”

—LN Bethea, Vermont poet and activist

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“The inimitable spirit of Reuben Jackson is wholly in these poems, sophisticate connoisseur of all things humane and beautiful: friends, family, music, ‘October light’ as ‘an answered prayer.’ Wide-eyed and ever aware of the pitch of history, Jackson’s mind is the gathering we need now and tomorrow.”

 —Major Jackson, poet, professor, and author of six books of poetry, including Razzle Dazzle

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“Reuben Jackson's My Specific Awe and Wonder is a heart-wrenching parting gift from one of our great bards who elevates the quotidian in each of these intimate, spare poems. This volume takes its reader on a roadtrip through the lens of a nerdy Black dude from D.C. but stationed in Vermont. These poems reveal the poet in solidarity with nature, yet self conscious and hyper aware of his otherness. These poems may well be the answer to the question many of us struggle with: How can we as humans feel less alone?” 

—Abdul Ali, author of Trouble Sleeping

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“Reuben Jackson’s poems are beautiful, crystalline structures…his words speak to everyone who cares about language, music, and engagement with the world...with these poems his voice will remain resonant and very deeply alive.”

—Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup, executive director of Vermont Humanities

Reviews & in the News

Savvy Verse & Wit, September 17, 2024: Review: My Specific Awe and Wonder: Poems by Reuben Jackson

Seven Days, August 28, 2024: Reuben Jackson's Final Poems Explore Race in Vermont 

COFFEE WINE and WORDS Poetry Podcast, August 27, 2924: How To Get There by Reuben Jackson

Vermont Public, August 22, 2024: Montpelier publisher releases two posthumous books by local authors

Burlington Free Press, June 21, 2024: Stay cool by the pool this summer by reading these books with Vermont connections

About the author

Reuben Jackson (1956-2024), a Vermonter at heart, was a poet, jazz scholar, radio DJ, and music critic, born in Georgia and raised in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Goddard College in 1978. After several years in D.C., Jackson returned to Vermont and worked as an English teacher at Burlington High School and was a mentor with The Young Writers Project. He later hosted Friday Night Jazz on Vermont Public Radio from 2012 to 2018. Jackson served as the curator of the Smithsonian’s Duke Ellington Collection in Washington, D.C. and was the archivist with The University of The District Of Columbia’s Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives. His music reviews have been published in the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, Jazz Times, and featured on All Things Considered.

His poems have been published in over forty anthologies. His first volume of poetry, fingering the keys, which Joseph Brodsky picked for the Columbia Book Award, was published in 1991. His second collection, Scattered Clouds: New & Selected Poems, was published by the Alan Squire Publishing’s imprint the Santa Fe Writer’s Project in 2019. His work appears in This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, edited by Kwame Alexander and published by Little, Brown and Company in 2024.