The Instant of Knowing: Lectures, Criticism and Occasional Prose (Poets on Poetry)

Josephine Jacobsen, born in 1908, had her first poem published when she was just ten years old. Though Jacobsen has been writing and publishing for almost eighty years, she remained outside the literary world until she was named Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1971. She has since been honored numerous times, receiving such prestigious awards as the annual Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
The Instant of Knowing: Lectures, Criticism and Occasional Prose joins recent collections of Jacobsen's poetry and short stories, bringing together for the first time the highlights of this distinguished poet's long and varied career as a literary critic, lecturer, and reviewer. Of special interest are two lectures delivered at the Library of Congress while she was Consultant in Poetry there, and a rich assortment of never before collected op-ed and travel pieces from the Baltimore Sun. The volume also includes critical pieces on Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings, Robert Lowell, A.R. Ammons, Samuel Beckett, and J.D. Salinger; an unpublished lecture, "The Admiring Bog," on the perils of poetic celebrity; and an extended interview with John Wheatcroft. The book is edited and introduced by the poet Elizabeth Spires, and concludes with three recent, uncollected poems of Jacobsen's.
Josephine Jacobsen is author of In the Crevice of Time: New and Collected Poems ( 1995), a nominee for the National Book Award, and What Goes Without Saying Collected Short Stories (1996.) She continues to live and write in Baltimore. Elizabeth Spires is a writer-in-residence, Goucher College, Baltimore, Maryland, and the author of four collections of poetry.

Jacobsen's writing career spans over 65 years, with critical attention increasing with the passage of time. In the Crevice of Time (Johns Hopkins, 1995), her collected poems, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1995, and her collected short stories were recently issued as What Goes Without Saying (LJ 9/15/96). The current title gathers the best of her other writings for the first time: reviews, lectures, essays, and miscellaneous pieces. It begins with a biographical introduction and ends with a long interview and three poems written since In the Crevice of Time. In the essay "Lion Under Maples," Jacobsen describes how nature taught her the essence of poetry. In her review of the work of A.R. Ammons, she writes: "One of the few invariable characteristics of a first class poet's work is its ability to create a new poetic world." The present collection will be of interest to academic and larger public libraries.?Nancy P. Shires, East Carolina Univ., Greenville,
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