Description
Grapes writes poems that operate somewhere in the middle ground between pop culture and philosophy.
–David Ulin, Los Angeles Times
It’s fairly impossible to do justice to Jack Grapes’ diversity, the sprawling, multiplicitous nature of his work. Grapes covers a tremendous amount of ground, abstract and figurative, personal and philosophical, literary and historical — and it goes on with wit and flair, a loopy, urbane surrealism not unlike John Asbery’s that collides with a large-hearted acceptance, a relishing of the ridiculous that seems wholly Grapes’ own. These moves do not seem half-digested; seem rather, the product of an original, omnivorous sensibility. It takes great courage to draw these disparate and too long opposed strands of American poetry—the intimate and the cerebral, confessional and philosophical—into alignment. We should be glad to see him working this fertile vein — this unexpected, exultant, unmistakably American one—as successfully as he does.
–Matthew Specktor, Poetry Flash
