Elizabeth Jacobson

Poetry

There are as Many Songs in the World as Branches of Coral

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Poem: Shooting Star and Bolide

One came from the east —
faint as a strand of long silver hair.
A few minutes later— the other— from the north—
brilliant like the blaze of a rocket.

Lying there on my bench, my back cold against stone
I felt welcomed by space
and the isolation it conjures.

Then this darkness, which courses over everything
turned greenish— then gold— then translucent.

Socrates said a soul, in its departure
from the body, will be dispersed
and driven away by the winds,
and be nowhere and nothing

in another world—

But I am still here, with mountains all around me,
a body to be alone in—
a consciousness that is next to nothing,
and full of the cosmos.

This poem was originally published in Lana Turner and is forthcoming in There are as Many Songs in the World as Branches of Coral, Parlor Press/Free Verse Editions, (c) 2025 by Parlor Press. Used by permission.

Santa Fe, NM

Statement

My third full-length collection, There are as many Songs in the World as Branches of Coral, will be published in 2025 by Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press. The book is divided into three titled sections: Rhapsodies, Lullaby, and Devotionals. As the main title of the book intimates many distinct voices sing in this collection, often expressing the complicated, rapidly fluctuating truths of our heating planet, family function and dysfunction, and, I hope, the surprising reflections that emerge from a continuous practice of paying attention to the self, society and the greater wild world. The Chan koan, “Each branch of coral holds up the moon,” is reimagined for the title of this collection in that every single thing participates in the whole of the infinite— everything holds everything up, and everything has a voice. What we understand and what we cannot know is boundless, and so, I wonder, can I reside in this mystery? Can I stay with what is opaque and, through writing, investigate and discover a way into clarity? NOT INTO THE BLOSSOMS AND NOT INTO THE AIR: That old adage: the devil is in the details is not where it is at for me. The zest for life, for vitality and creativity, is in the details. In Zen, we sit and watch the mind, or we walk and watch the mind. Sitting in a meditation hall is similar to writing at a desk in that my body is quiet as it pays attention to my thoughts. In the Zen practice, however, I watch,

Bio

Elizabeth Jacobson was the fifth Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico and an Academy of American Poets 2020 Laureate Fellow. Her third collection of poems, There are as Many Songs in the World as Branches of Coral, will be published in 2025 by Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press. Her other books include, Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air, winner of the New Measure Poetry Prize (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2019) and the 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for both New Mexico Poetry and Best New Mexico Book, Her Knees Pulled In (Tres Chicas Books, 2012), two chapbooks from Dancing Girl Press, Are the Children Make Believe? and A Brown Stone, and Everything Feels Recent When You’re Far Away, Poetry and Art from Santa Fe Youth During the Pandemic (Axle Books, 2021), which she co- edited. She is the founding director of the WingSpan Poetry Project, a not-for-profit which, from 2013-2020, conducted weekly poetry classes in battered family and homeless shelters in New Mexico. As a co-founding director of Poetry Pollinators, Jacobson’s work continues in the community with this ecopoetry public art initiative dedicated to empowering poetry, art, education, and the environment in support of declining native bee populations. The first bee house, which displays a panel for a poem and an education panel, fully funded and supported by many local organizations, was installed by the Santa Fe River in June 2022. Elizabeth’s work has been sustained with grants and residencies by

Media

2-D, Writing