Review: My Specific Awe and Wonder: Poems by Reuben Jackson

a legacy that lives in the clouds

My Specific Awe and Wonder** by Reuben Jackson*, published by Rootstock Publishing, is delightful and all that I would expect from the poet. His child-like wonder and musical influences tied neatly into the Black American experience in unlikely places, like Vermont. His poems are like trips into the past where we see city boys frolicking in nature, where a Black man must confront another instance of racism, and where the wonder of a man remains in spite of the darkest parts of the world. It is a light, that wonder.

Jackson’s collection includes new poems, drafts of poems, and republished poems. It’s a homage to the man who was looking back for the lessons he may have missed, but also a man who wanted to find the light in everything.

Old Music

Writing poems

About old music

Is beginning to make me feel like

One of those relatives

You consciously avoid

In this poem, particularly, you see how Jackson views his passions, as things to be avoided or later in the poem laughed at “It’s more like a chive on your tooth/Spaghetti stains on your sweater//Everyone’s giggling/You’re the last to know” (pg. 29) But in the midst of this tongue-in-cheek humor, the reality that changes so many things in this nation is hovering “…this isn’t the same as discovering/One’s blackness in the mirror”

His poems are ripe with rhythm and music, awkward nerdy-ness, and shy men who observe, uncover stark truths, and tell the tale. Jackson’s poems are deeply personal as they are universal. Some of his most affecting poems are in the voice of “Kelly Donaldson.”

Kelly Writes:

I keep my head

On swivel

So I (hopefully)

Don’t become

Black history

In this

Or any other

Month.

In my opinion, Kelly’s voice is the voice of Reuben when he is at his most frank. He is able to let loose the trappings of decorum and highlight the uglier realities of life in Vermont, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Still there is a lot of love here. Like all of us, the places we fall in love with and grew up in are filled with contradictions.

My Specific Awe and Wonder** by Reuben Jackson is not to be missed. In addition to his poetry, you’ll get a glimpse into his drafting process for poetry. I would not trade this collection from my friend for anything in the world, except for him to be alive and well.

RATING: Cinquain

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*Please consider donating to the American Academy of Poets Reuben Jackson Poetry Prize for Howard University.

**Purchasing this book raises funds for the Reuben Jackson Scholarship fund at the University of the District of Columbia or you can donate directly through March 2025.

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About the Author:

Reuben Jackson (1956-2024), a Vermonter at heart, was a poet, jazz scholar, radio DJ, and music critic, born in Georgia and raised in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Goddard College in 1978. After several years in D.C., Jackson returned to Vermont and worked as an English teacher at Burlington High School and was a mentor with The Young Writers Project. He later hosted Friday Night Jazz on Vermont Public Radio from 2012 to 2018. Jackson served as the curator of the Smithsonian’s Duke Ellington Collection in Washington, D.C. and was the archivist with The University of The District Of Columbia’s Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives. His music reviews have been published in the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, Jazz Times, and featured on All Things Considered.

His poems have been published in over forty anthologies. His first volume of poetry, fingering the keys, which Joseph Brodsky picked for the Columbia Book Award, was published in 1991. His second collection, Scattered Clouds: New & Selected Poems, was published by the Alan Squire Publishing’s imprint the Santa Fe Writer’s Project in 2019. His work appears in This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, edited by Kwame Alexander and published by Little, Brown and Company in 2024.