Ben Jackson, poet

Images/split the truth/in fractions, Denise Levertov wrote in a poem.

This is how a poet gets us to listen: he chops his own life up into little pieces and puts the pieces back together right in front of us, but not just like they were.

When a poem is a poem it can seem like it just fell out of the poet's pocket when he or she was out walking. You or I would have kept walking, but the poet stops, bends down and retrieves whatever has fallen to make something new of it again.

A poet is always in the midst of finding his or her own voice, even in the midst of the poem.

It was a pleasure to hear Ben Jackson read his poems at the Great Overland Book Company Sunday night. Ben's poems are made up of one image after another that always go on to tell a whole story; and to hear him read more than one poem I could hear the actual on-going narrative, unique to Ben, in which he keeps finding his voice.