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paper • 128 pages • 15.95
ISBN: 978-1-945588-26-6

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Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going

Jessica Jacobs

Winner of the Goldie Award in Poetry from the Golden Crown Literary Society
Winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry
Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award in Poetry
On Library Journal‘s Best Poetry 2019 list

A memoir-in-poems about coming of age in sultry Florida and the speaker navigating a complex relationship with her wife grounded in the daily world.

“Stridulation Sonnet” from Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going

Tiger beetles, crickets, velvet ants, all
know the useful friction of part on part,
how rub of wing to leg, plectrum to file,
marks territories, summons mates. How

a lip rasped over finely tined ridges can
play sweet as a needle on vinyl. But
sometimes a lone body is not enough.
So a sapsucker drums the chimney flash

for our amped-up morning reveille. Or,
later, home again, the wind’s papery
come hither through the locust leaves. The roof
arcing its tin back to meet the rain.

The bed’s soft creak as I roll to my side.
What sounds will your body make against mine?

About the Author

  • "I'm totally certain Jessica Jacobs' book is going to save someone's life. Probably more than one person, but I'm thinking of the one person who, like me when I was first coming out, needed a book like this so much. Like Marilyn Hacker's Love, Death and the Changing of the Seasons and Minnie Bruce Pratt's S/He before it, Jacobs' poetry collection/memoir-in-verse tells of love and everyday life in a way everyone deserves to hear about but many of us never do. Yes, the world is wider than it was when I was 16 and dying for a book like this, but there's still so much work to do and so many stories that need to be told. This book would have helped me know it doesn't necessarily 'get better' but it sure can get great in unimaginable ways. It would have helped me envision new ways to be alive. An honest, activist, real world dream of a book. A treasure."
  • "All great love stories deserve to be written down for history's sake. With Take Me with You, Wherever You're Going, Jessica Jacobs gives us an intimate, sensual, desirous book full of real life hardships and an epic love story of surrender and survival. Rooted in landscape and written with a rich lyrical line, these gorgeous poems pay necessary homage to what truly matters."
  • "From the murky waters of Florida to a rolling blackout in New York City to the windblown fields of the Midwest, Jessica Jacobs refuses to 'confine our darkness to the dark,' expertly illuminating the mysterious topographies of love, desire, and longing. Take Me with You, Wherever You're Going is a collection whose title suggest—and whose pages deliver—and evocative journey. Though, by the time you're done, you'll likely want to stay right where you are: in the vision of this gifted poet, in the glow of these stunning poems."
  • “A powerful autobiography of friendship, love, marriage...” Read the full review.
  • "...Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going is foremost a love story penned by an introvert who writes, runs, falls in love, and marries. It is filled with love poems and, while some are just shy of sentimental, they all hit their mark with lyricism and probing...." Read the full review.
  • "Jessica Jacobs’s Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books) is a love story. Plain and simple. Actually, strike that. This second collection of poems by Jacobs is hardly plain or simple. Instead, its language is lush and evocative, and its love story is a complicated plotline of twists and turns...." Read the full review.
  • "...The trajectory of Jessica Jacobs’s second poetry collection, Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going, mirrors that of an epic narrative. A sharp-witted protagonist leaves home in search of something more, adventures into shadows and self-discovery, and ultimately comes to rest in a place where their experiences and identity are respected and revered rather than ostracized. Here are poems not about fitting in but about belonging, about finding a place that does not ask one to change who they are but instead says there is room for you here as you are...." Read the full review.
  • "In language limpid, forthright, and involving, Jacobs relates the story of a life: growing up different in swampy Florida; discovering one’s sexuality and self; learning that finding and sustaining real love is both wondrous and hard. Her voice is immediately captivating and remarkably variable." Read the full review.
  • "...I approached Jessica Jacobs’ Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going with caution–maybe its murky pages were full of gators. I was surprised to find my own restless, complicated love for Florida pounding in Jacobs’ intimate collection...."Read the full review.


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