โIn this debut collection Rosetta Bellew-Jennings brings an unflinching attention and a strong voice to the conversation. The site of crisis is interior โ both inside the house and the that which we must go through alone. In many ways readers are housebound voyeurs, but in the end itโs really us weโre watching in these mirrored walls. Built on fragments that are both elegant and focused, Is The Room draws our attention to the isolation of looking, and the clarity of โ[s]omething I cannot find.’โ
โJohn Gallaher, poet, Your Father on the Train of Ghosts and Map of the Folded World
โBallew-Jenningsโ poems have us question the nature of relationship and life as people move in and out of our lives, and us across time. If the origin of the word haunt is to pull, claim, to lead home, then Is the Room is a collection of poems that both haunts the reader and feels haunted itself. Through her mysterious and lovely collection, the poet reveals the boundaries between what/who we know and what/who we think we know, and the variety of separations, however arbitrary, that exist between them/us. Ballew-Jennings leads us, pulls us toward a home that dwells in our collective memories.
โStacy Christie, writer; editor at Hothouse
โRosetta Ballew-Jenningsโs poems are alive and intelligent. Their deliberate, sometimes disorienting syntax takes us on a multilayered journey through rooms, doors, hallways and windows. The physical as well as the emotional space within the poems is haunted, and everywhere we question what we see, for we witness people and colors โchange back and forthโ and โyou may not be/ the you of here.โ Ultimately, this book is about love, a story โabout something/ you would underline twice.’โ
โKaterina Stoykova-Klemer, Senior Editor, Accents Publishing
โIs the room makes poetry out of dream logic and uncertainty, whether itโs a location only specified as โleft of where you areโ or a phone message from a woman who canโt say why sheโs calling. Rosetta Ballew-Jenningsโ writing explores stark and disconcerting fragments of a domestic life where even household doors and halls donโt fit together quite right, and where a conversation about cereal and milk shifts abruptly to โI donโt love you, / or something like that.โ With mysterious lyricism and echoes of Jean Valentine, this book heeds the authorโs plea and applies it to the reader: โPlease do not forget / what I am afraid of.’โ
โ Steven D. Schroeder, author of The Royal Nonesuch; and editor of Anti-
