Praise for Fragments of V:

When the press is desire / a word meant for it is torn / in two to meet your lips…” insists the speaker of “VII,” capturing a thematic heart of Jen Rouse’s Fragments of V: the inherent torment of speaking desire—whether of it, around it, into it, or through it—to better understand the self at the mercy, and miracle, of the beloved. Composed in the tradition of Virginia, Vita, and Sappho, this intimately wrought book-length poem unfolds over a series of twenty fragments and makes continued address to a lover described as “…not fact. Merely / gesture and scent in a hazy / vision, a gothic fog across / a longing pond.” What’s clear, however, is a spidery distance which keeps the fire aflame and points towards the fragmenting nature of desire itself: “…is there less / value in who we are / together apart the / cleaving / harsh of you…” considers the speaker more than once. And yet, Rouse transcends mere longing and reflects deeply on what it means to love, which too can be “a perfect calf a racing steed / bolting into thunderous applause / of Spring.” Find in Fragments of V a single heart rendered on the page, that of “…two women set out on an / adventure” from wherein the speaker assures us: “…a whole life blooms / against my fingertip.” 

—Susan L. Leary, author of Dressing the Bear

Here is a fraught meditation; each poem, a place of erstwhile love. Rouse opens the door. We glimpse the haunting—body as house, union as home, lover as longing—and the uneasy landscape of a leave-taking. “How I fidget you between/ caught paper,” Rouse writes, and we feel, in each exquisite poem, that restlessness, that reluctance to let go. Edgy and aching, poignant and sexy, Fragments of V enthralled me. 

—Melissa Ostrom, author of The Beloved Wild