In her daring, risky, and tender new collection, We Can’t Tell If the Constellations Love Us, Jennifer Oakes leads us beneath the layers of depression, violence, and climate despair to remind us, ever so gently, “the world is connected/by breath/and it’s bodies that do/the breathing.” Oakes’ is one of the most original voices in contemporary American poetry, but with no posturing or easy gimmicks, her inventive poems grounded in the world we live in. In each of these pieces, and especially her long poem, “In My Original Kansas, We Were Iron,” she bares her soul, using the everyday, often difficult material of life as fuel.
—James Crews, editor of The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection & Joy
42milespress.com 