Praise for Precarious

" Reading through Precarious: new & selected poems by Judith Pacht, is like sitting in a familiar room with friends enclosed in the constant drone of distant city-sounds—beyond the glass doors there is the koi pond, the gravel path, the wooden fence—and suddenly you are floating in a multiverse of times and places, relationships, loves and losses, from the mundane to the profound and back again. The book is a distillation of a lifetime in the poetry life, with finely crafted work in complex forms such as bouts-rimés, sestinas and Spanish sonnets. There is haunting music in some poems, with fugue-like undertones, sparkling poems of childhood—and poems about the challenge of aging together with a partner. There is also a lively humor, as in the slightly risqué poems of food preparation. There are poems that read as if written from ancient history and poems about the shocks and disappointments of today’s news. Welcome to the lyrical, complex world of Judith Pacht. Hang on, it is a ride worth taking. " " Reading through Precarious: new & selected poems by Judith Pacht, is like sitting in a familiar room with friends enclosed in the constant drone of distant city-sounds—beyond the glass doors there is the koi pond, the gravel path, the wooden fence—and suddenly you are floating in a multiverse of times and places, relationships, loves and losses, from the mundane to the profound and back again. The book is a distillation of a lifetime in the poetry life, with finely crafted work in complex forms such as bouts-rimés, sestinas and Spanish sonnets. There is haunting music in some poems with fugue-like undertones, and sparkling poems of childhood&meash;and poems about the challenge of aging together with a partner. There is also a lively humor, as in the slightly risqué poems of food preparation. There are poems that read as if written from ancient history and poems about the shocks and disappointments of today’s news. Welcome to the lyrical, complex world of Judith Pacht. Hang on, it is a ride worth taking. " " In Precarious, Pacht excavates consciousness and conscience—the intricacies of the self, its early imprints and consequences, the way an older version holds her younger forms. The poet inhabits the multiples. She describes the "scent of resin and damp earth, musk and bark in the air," sensations in the mind of a ten-year-old girl, sharp and tender, taking the world in. And that’s exactly what the poems in Precarious do: perceive life as it is: complicated, fragile, lavish with beauty. " " Judith Pacht’s powerful new book, Precarious: New & Selected Poems, is a remarkable and wise gathering of the poet’s elegant, fiercely arresting reflections. Worldly, historically aware and urgent in their intimacy, these poems are memorable for their deep empathy and visionary clarity. There are stunning elegies here, often in observance of great losses, reckoning with our struggle to move beyond grief to a place of wisdom and consolation. With their formal ease and strong moral compass, the poems of this lasting collection remind us of the beauty and solace poetry holds in our lives. "