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The seventh edition of Sarabande’s highly-acclaimed Quarternote Chapbook Series.
"It is surprising that Josephine Jacobsen, born in 1908 and one of the twentieth century’s superlative American poets, is not better known. In an effort to address this paradox, Contents of a Minute, edited by Elizabeth Spires, offers an essential postscript to a life’s work already noted for its skill, compassion, power, and precision. Elizabeth Bishop, another poet of intelligence and restraint, has received well-deserved posthumous appreciation. Jacobsen, blessed with longevity, died in 2003, so the time is right for a critical reassessment. Contents of a Minute indispensably reminds us that her life’s work ranks with her generation’s best." —Ned Balbo, The Antioch Review
Josephine Jacobsen devoted her life to literature, and by the time she passed into what she once described as “the flawed dark” in 2003 at the age of ninety-four, she left behind a legacy of almost a dozen books and several considerable honors, including a position as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1971 to 1973, the 1988 Lenore Marshall Award, the 1993 Shelley Memorial Award, and the Poetry Society of America’s highest honor—the Robert Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry—in 1997.
Contents of a Minute is a treasure of recently discovered and previously unpublished poetry, including work from the 1930-40s and from her last residency at the MacDowell Colony in the 1980s. Written with the spare eloquence and freedom of mind which Jacobsen was so well known for, this collection of poems pays tribute to a woman ahead of her time. Jacobsen was her own poet, one whose ownership of poetry was so clear from the outset that she wielded it in her own powerful, idiosyncratic way, bowing to no imperative outside her own necessity.
Josephine Jacobsen was born on August 19, 1908, in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada. A poet, short story writer, and critic, she was educated by private tutors at Roland Park Country school and graduated in 1926. She served as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress from 1971 to 1973 and as honorary consultant in American letters from 1973 to 1979. Between 1978 and 1979, she was Vice President of The Poetry Society of America. She was a member of both the literature panel for the National Endowment of the Arts and of the poetry committee of Folger Library from 1979 to 1983.
Jacobsen is the author of numerous collections of poetry, among them In the Crevice of Time: New and Collected Poems (John Hopkins University Press, 1995), The Chinese Insomniacs: New Poems (1981), The Shade-Seller: New and Selected Poems (1974), The Animal Inside (1966), The Human Climate: New Poems (1953), and Let Each Man Remember (1940). Her awards and honors include an Academy of American Poets fellowship; a Doctor of Humane Letters from Goucher College, The College of Notre Dame in Maryland, Townson State University, and Johns Hopkins University; and the Shelley Memorial Award for lifetime service to literature, among other honors. She was inducted into The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994. Josephine Jacobson died July 9, 2003.
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