War Poet

Rob Jacquess War Poet is a striking memorable book full of erotic and martial intensity. The poems create a lyrical memoir out of the poets time serving in the United States military as a gay man. Ultimately Jacques recognizes the self as a primary center of conflict. The body--even his own precious and expendable--is charged with finding war in love and love in war. Like the military conflicts at the heart of this collection these poems teeter between formal rigidity and wild abandon as the poet explores complex intersections between sexuality and violence: we treat flesh savagely / in battle or in bed. Depicting tender relations between soldiers at rest and on the front lines and turbulent love affairs this book takes on elements of language and form itself as its fiercest weaponry. - Richie Hofmann author of Second Empire