Jacqueline Marcus

PUBLICATIONS:

Jacqueline Marcus' poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, The Kenyon Review, The Ohio Review, The Literary Review, The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Journal, Poetry International, Hayden's Ferry Review, College English, The Sycamore Review, The Seattle Review, 5AM, Iris, Appalachia, The Mid-American Review, Passages North, Ascent, Southern Humanities Review, The Cider Press Review, Poet Lore, Faultline, The Yalobusha Review

Online Publications:  ThreeCandles, PoetryMagazine,
Samsara Quarterly, Blue Fifth Review, NewtopiaMagazine, CommonDreams.org

Satires & Political letters: Exquisite Corpse , Washington Post, Slate, Common Dreams,
Freedom Forum First Amendment Calendar (firstamendmentcenter.org)

Anthologies:
The 1997 ANTHOLOGY OF MAGAZINE VERSE & YEARBOOK OF AMERICAN POETRY, RED HEN ANTHOLOGY and a Chapbook from White Heron Press 1998.  She was a semifinalist in the Nation/Discovery 1997 Contest.

During her childhood years Jacqueline Marcus attended Sidwell Friends and studied painting at Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.  She loved to draw winter trees, which have become a central motif in her poems.  She received her undergraduate degree in Philosophy at the University of California Santa Barbara and her master's in Humanities at Southern Oregon University.  She teaches philosophy at Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo and is the editor of the online poetry journal, ForPoetry.com.

Trained as a philosopher, Jacqueline Marcus follows the ancient themes of Plato's Allegory of the Cave—the longing to know what lasts in a world of shadows—as her poetry traces a metaphorical journey from the river to the sea, exploring the natural world and reconciling its beauty with its suffering.

"Jacqueline Marcus's Close to the Shore presents us with a poet whose prodigious talents, uncanny emotional range, and (dare one say it?) profound spiritual sympathies, have opened up a space in the human heart where every thoughtful reader will feel welcome.  This is a poet of abundance and wonder, a poet who reminds us that poetry is, in some very elemental way, "the insistence of Form, / each note, an integration, / each note, a prayer-wheel turning."

"An enormously powerful and accomplished poet.  Her poems all have extraordinary authority and presence.  There is a grace to these poems that always pleases, and an intelligence to their meditations that is always compelling."

"Jacqueline Marcus's poems have all the suppleness and hesitation of thought itself.  They wander through so many dimensions - philosophical, personal, and political - on the way to a condition which, they seem to say, may or may not exist, but which is nevertheless luminous, intelligent, and serene."

Richly metaphorical and quietly bursting with deliciously demure eloquence, Close to the Shore meanders in and out of the depths of beauty and pain, powered by an immensely thoughtful set of poems which will victor over many a reader's heart.

Marcus, a philosophy professor — and editor for ForPoetry.com — is an extraordinarily gifted and successful poet who here never ever missteps — or fails to command a well-deserved spot on center stage.

Delicious.

—The Boox Review:
Good Reviews for Good Books
http://www.thebooxreview.com/roundup.htm