Unrequited: An Anthology of Love Poems about Inanimate Objects

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Back Cover Blurbs

This anthology is itself an inanimate object springing to life through poems that titillate and caress. The poets boldly admit—with humor and reverence—their passion for the likes of McDonald’s French fries (Deep-fried crack sticks, golden/ brown salt licks), tampons (First let me apologize/ for greatly underestimating you), and Spanish cava (To drink this wine is to put your hands in the great dark/ furrows of a field and touch/ the pulse of roots).
–Karen Paul Holmes, author of Untying the Knot

If you think love poems are trite, filled with clichés or have nothing new to say, then you haven’t been reading the right odes about the exquisite pain of heartbreak. In Unrequited: An Anthology of Love Poems About Inanimate Objects, edited by Kelly Ann Jacobson, we learn that this grief isn’t only caused by people who don’t return our fondest feelings, who provide “violence in [a] caress” and “the slap back to reality,” who provide a path back to “the old/porcelain sink of memory.” Objects, too, can incite our poetic passions, can “keep us from moving forward” in a way that is far from healthy but all too tempting to wallow in and lavish our attentions on. A collection of all types of poems from all manner of poets, Unrequited is the anthology for those who long for the days of bad habits practiced in ragged starter apartments, who reminisce about times when the height of technology was a Singer sewing machine. It is for those who find free verse in thrift stores, sifting through spoons; who suspect there are sonnets hiding in stuck junk drawers or outside in the compost heap that nourishes the vegetable garden; who know there are prose poems growing like mold in the sticky corners of broken appliances and experimental forms waiting to be found under every fluorescent light in the nearest strip mall; who tear up over a simple pair of socks that somehow made it back from the dryer unseparated. Pick up Unrequited and “Let it lie lightly/in your hand, warming you,/as love does when it arrives,/unexpected, right on time.” –Jen Karetnick, author of American Sentencing

The theme of this collection has been a long time coming. Kelly Jacobson has brought together a myriad of poems which speak to the comfort and possession that bring the human spirit both pleasure and perplexity. From illumination to the warmth of winter’s wool socks to the succulence of a juicy peach, this book celebrates the creature comforts that often go unnoticed.
wren thompson-wynn, poet

Butter dish, wedding bowl, paper-slip chore. Pickles, peaches, the sloped shoulders of a sunburned pepper. Summer sandals, a cap lost in transit, a pattern to be repeated or replaced. The forbidden and funny reside next to lawn gnomes and lightning, as these poets gather to give tribute to the ordinary and extraordinary objects of their affection. This love may not be returned, but it is certainly rewarded.
Mandy L. Rose, poet

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Reviews

Read Alex Carrigan’s review of Unrequited in Quail Bell Magazine (May 31, 2016)

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Other anthologies edited by Kelly Ann Jacobson:

Answers I’ll Accept: True Accounts of Online Dating

Magical: An Anthology of Fantasy, Fairy Tales, and Other Magical Fiction for Adults

Dear Robot: An Anthology of Epistolary Science Fiction