The 2003 Word Press First Book Poetry Prize: An Alabaster Flask by Jennifer Reeser
Jennifer
Reeser's An Alabaster Flask is the winner of the 2003 Word Press First
Book Prize. Reeser's elegant formalism brings memorable music to a variety
of lyric topics, and establishes her as a major new voice.
Samples of Jennifer Reeser's poems
"Reading Jennifer Reeser's poems for the first time, you might be reminded
of the lyricism of an earlier generation of women poets--Millay, Teasdale,
Wylie. But in poems like 'Arclight' and 'Double Ballade of Dead Letters' she
displays a voice that is uniquely her own. Working largely apart from schools
and influences, Reeser has managed to produce a poetry of seamless craft and
unmistakeable quality.”
--R.S. Gwynn
"Jennifer Reeser has the rare poetic gift of using simple language supremely
well -- choosing one right word after another and fitting them (but never
forcing them) into the appropriate form. Alabaster Flask is full of
poems on unusual subjects (such as love letters to Dr. Frankenstein), in which
every image is like an arch that helps to bear the weight, and builds a structure
of unusual clarity and beauty."
--Gail White
"Jennifer Reeser's poems combine the lushness of the Louisiana bayou
with a classical restraint. As her grandmother planted a riot of flowers in
her yard, 'filling the ground with life from curb to curb,' Reeser fills her
measures with sensual music. A wide-array of subjects from the personal lyric
to the persona--from 'Agatha Christie by Lamplight' to 'Elizabeth Leaves a
Letter for Dr. Frankenstein'--appear in an anthology of forms. Among the hardy
perennials, quatrains and sonnets, we encounter such exotic metrical cultivars
as sapphics and cretics. The reader is also treated to a generous offering
of Reeser's accomplished translations."
--A.E. Stallings
"Jennifer Reeser's first collection of poems, An Alabaster Flask,
is appropriately titled, since her best work has the luster and durability
of alabaster. Relying heavily on the connotative magic of words, her poetry
offers startling perspectives on a wide range of human experience. She writes
effectively in traditional forms like the sonnet and the Sapphic as well as
in experimental modes. Her book reveals the originality, intensity, and scope
of an artist who may become one of the new century's major poets."
--Dr. Alfred Dorn
“...glimpses into an interesting, complex mind not afraid to take verbal
risks or acknowledge a debt to Emily Dickinson and the Metaphysical poets.
Reeser is not afraid of thought or feeling, or of rhetoric either; her daring
often pays off with poems that move, stimulate, and give pleasure to the ear.”
--Rhina P. Espaillat
"Jennifer Reeser's premier collection, An Alabaster Flask, is
a mirror wherein human and divine concerns, and private as well as public
voices, are reflected with grace, style, and concision. This book gives promise
not only of a new young poet, but of the formalist movement itself."
--Dr. Joseph S. Salemi
Jennifer Reeser was born in 1968. Her poems, translations, criticism and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in U.S., British and Internet journals such as Louisiana Literature, Cumberland Poetry Review, Disquieting Muses, PIVOT, Blue Unicorn, The Lyric, The New Laurel Review, and Able Muse. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart and been chosen for selection in the upcoming anthology of New Expansivist writers, Rising Phoenix, edited by Sonny Williams, consulting editor Dana Gioia. She is assistant editor to the journal Iambs & Trochees, and lives in Louisiana with her husband Jason and their five children.
$16.00, 108 pages, ISBN: 0-9717371-7-7