Richard Jackson

Cleveland State Prize Winner

"The rhythmic flow in Richard Jackson's poems -- happy, dreamy, passionate and even cruel for the way it raises our hopes only to thwart them with the truth, and which opens the kernal of memory -- immense bontee and responsibility in it all, immense lust -- is at the same time possessive and healing. The reader feels as one of the Chinese soldiers buried alove, turned into terra cotta with its emperor, sewed into the radiant remembrance of the author's youth and life and dramatically loving it. Why? I guess compassion and generosity is so inclusive. Everything touched here becomes carved and firm, thus relieving. ALIVE ALL DAY reminds me of the best of America. And of a gothic cathedral."
-Tomaz Salamun

"The poems in ALIVE ALL DAY take on a nearly impossible job: to consider what it means to belong to modern histroy and not to put down that dismal, monolithic weight. The wonderful amplitude of the poems, their teeming grace, testifies that we can live with such chaos and not lie about it or ignore it; indeed the poems are a emonstration of how we might do such a thing. This is a heartening and full-hearted book."
-William Matthews