Wow!! I loved this book!! ( )

I was most intrigued by the poet's background - twenty years a surgeon, professor of surgery, and now as he turns 80, he mines memories to produce this lamentation and celebration of those eighty years. I wanted to love it, and some of the poems genuinely moved me: This stanza, for instance, struck a chord with me.

"He paused to riffle among the files
of his mind for things left incomplete, machine repairs or secret loves,
things unfinished that might linger
to reproach or jeer at life’s extremity."
In a few instances, I found the language a bit overwrought. Perhaps it was just me - allusions with which I wasn't as familiar as I could be.

All in all an eclectic collection that every reader will find gems, as he dips into memories of all periods of his life.

"God Damned this Fucking Virus" though, is no doubt a poem that many readers will find resonant. ( )

NOTE: I won a free eBook copy of this book in PDF format from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers (September 2020).

"80 Poems" is thoroughly enjoyable and poignant volume of contemporary poetry. Jacobs' verse vacillates between the accessible and the esoteric, sometimes even within the same line. (I, for one, consulted my dictionary countless times to zero in on the meaning of certain phrases). Though I am a few generations younger than the author, I found many of the poems about nature, memory, and aging relatable. Others gave me insight into a perspective I am not sure I will share when I am eighty, but made me curious about what might come. The collection is often bittersweet, but there's no question that they all encompass a life fully lived. ( )

Reviewing verse is harder than reviewing prose.
80 poems by Lloyd Jacobs is
An honest tinful
Marking his 80th birthday with
80 fragments of emotion
And experience.

Loose verse, not tied to patterns:
A free approach to rhyme and meter,
Not doggerel.
Thoughts to make me reflect, or
Recoil and then think.

Worth a read.
Slowly!
After all,
It contains a life. ( )

This is a wonderful collection of poetry reflecting the expanse of modern life from the mid-20th century into the 21st. On the one hand, there is a sense of nostalgia in some poems, a longing for ones innocence and childhood in a world free of concerns, technology, and modern anxieties. On the other hand, there are world travelers, dying businessmen, and landscapes altered by technology in the skies. The poems are beautiful and heartfelt. The only drawback was the it seems the author has a well-worn thesaurus, which makes the diction, at times, feel contrived and out-of-place. ( )