How to Live on Bread and Music

by Jennifer K. Sweeney

“Jennifer Sweeney is one of the best young poets writing today, one other young poets should study as an example of the heights to which well-crafted image and form can take their own writing.” —The Pedestal Magazine [read the full review]

“Jennifer K. Sweeney’s How to Live on Bread and Music is a remarkable achievement from the hand of a poet with a subtle and compassionate mindfulness. These are poems that tell us we move forward in moments when motion seems all too risky and stillness all too intolerable. Adept at the delicate project of inventiveness in the line, she shows us time and again that language is the matter of the poet and that there is surprise in the gift, as this book is sure evidence of the gift.” — Afaa Michael Weaver, James Laughlin Award judge. See www.poets.org for more information about the prize.

“Each of Jennifer K. Sweeney’s poems is part of her quest to be fully alive to the beauty, terror, and wonder of living. ‘Oh life with your falling open, / April is eating itself alive / and I can hear the splitting of the dahlias / when I sleep.’ Rich in sound patterns, imagery, and metaphor, and packed with surprise, these poems take special joy in wild and juicy words: for example, ‘lyrate,’ ‘paldrons,’ ‘guillotine/ of wind’ ‘the sloop and slag of childhood,’ ‘deckled,’ and ‘lantern-hearted.’ Enter Sweeney’s world, and perhaps you too will become lantern-hearted.”

—Annie Boutelle

“In Jennifer K. Sweeney’s How to Live on Bread and Music we discover words that weigh the earth carefully and sing it into existence for this poet knows ‘song is the yeast / when the body wants.’ Her poetry is ‘pained with sensation’ and has the power to transform the reader, to resurrect dandelions from a field of armor.”

—Mark Irwi