Poetry Books and Awards

Manna In The Morning
Available at Kelsay Books, Amazon, and other booksellers

"Manna in the Morning is, quite simply, a lovely book. As she revisits holy texts, Jacqueline Jules gracefully connects ancient stories with modern times, gaining insights into her own quandaries and gently suggesting paths through which all of us may traverse our conflicts and crises. Go ahead and feast on the spiritual sustenance that Manna in the Morning provides. You won’t regret it." —Erika Dreifus, author of Birthright: Poems and Quiet Americans: Stories

"Jules explores contemporary faith with nuance and sensitivity, braiding together the ancient world and twenty-first century. She's particularly interested in the roles women play in the Biblical texts and brings a lively feminist sensibility to her poems: 'I’m Miriam/holding a tambourine,/dancing in the desert, grateful/for the smallest excuse/to sing.'" —Katherine E. Young, author of Day of the Border Guards, Poet Laureate Emerita, Arlington, VA

"In Manna in the Morning, poet Jacqueline Jules 'stand[s] on a narrow bridge,/the width of a whisper,/connecting [yesterday to] today to tomorrow.' Exploring choice and struggle in the lives of Abraham, Naomi, Noah, Jonah, Sarah, Eve, and other Biblical persons, the poet brings us back to ourselves." —Marjorie Maddox, author of Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Reading Poems with Insider Exercises

"Torah comes in many forms and from many places. And while the poetry in the Torah—and the later books of the Bible—is sometimes hard to decipher, the lovely poems in Jacqueline Jules' new collection called Manna in the Morning are accessible while profound, like the verse in Deuteronomy 30:12 that states 'It is not in heaven, that you should say: "Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?"' Jules paints pictures of the humanity of the biblical matriarchs and patriarchs, while lifting us up to our own potential. She offers hidden spiritual gifts and helps to place the reader on a path for ethical piety, something needed by all in this currently fractured world." —Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, author of Life's Daily Blessings

See Jacqueline Jules Reading from Manna in the Morning, Itzhak Perlman's Broken String, and Stronger Than Cleopatra in the Joaquin Miller Poetry Series.

"In the apocryphal story told about Yitzhak Perlman during his concert at Lincoln Center in 1995 when one of the four violin strings suddenly tore, and he proceeded to reconceive and play the entire work with three remaining strings, he said that 'sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can make with what you have left.' If ever there were a work that explores the aftermath of loss, it is this powerful and highly original collection by Jacqueline Jules."—Myra Sklarew, Author of Lithuania: New & Selected Poems

"What plucks at the heart strings of Jacqueline Jules' intense poems of Itzhak Perlman's Broken String is a dialectic between faith and loss where science mediates. . . . The poet dares to challenge Jean-Paul Sartre on despair and suggests to the physical therapist 'better to tease a tiger/ than poke a pain.' . . . This is a smart and smarting journey through the human condition."—Karren L. Alenier, author of The Anima of Paul Bowles

"After the shock of initial loss, when grief becomes a daily companion, we must learn, as Jacqueline Jules wisely writes, to find music in our crippled instruments. Like Jean-Paul Sartre, we 'cross that cruel river'; like Isaac Newton, our personal math proves 'we are vulnerable to falling objects.'"—Kim Roberts, founding editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly

"Jacqueline Jules writes the type of poetry we like best here at Today's book of poetry. It is immediately accessible, emotionally implicating and ultimately entirely rewarding. These poems go straight to that part of our hearts that knows grief and all of his sad friends."—review by Michael Dennis, Today's Book of Poetry, March 18, 2018. Read the full review.

Stronger Than Cleopatra is a poetry collection in which the reader accompanies Jacqueline Jules on a heart-wrenching journey through grief to come out on the other side, embracing a new life, one changed forever. Like an immediate close friend, the reader pads along on a trail with these thirty poems reflecting all the while on his or her own choices. Stronger than Cleopatra was published by ELJ Publications.

Press Release.

Sample poems and reviews.

Four poems from Stronger than Cleopatra featured in Beltway Poetry Quarterly.

Read about Stronger than Cleopatra in the Arlington Connection.