Critical Praise
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"Pleasure makes your teeth hurt. Its best quality is the way it keeps you reading, drawn forward toward the ending by a steady stream of stories. Mixed with history and science, peppered with factoids, laced with Biblical verse, Pleasure keeps you alert, wondering at the connections, trying to make sense even as the writer tries to make sense. In this way, Pleasure involves you in its creation--not content to be simply evidence of a writer working alone, unaware of his audience, Pleasure glances at its writer before turning toward us to ask, have you ever hurt like this? Again and again and again."
-Paul Bogard, Contest Judge and Author of The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
"[This poem] describes harrowing encounters with a cruel and abusive father and investigates the speaker's own violent tendencies. Bruising, vicious, and electric, "Ask Me About Love" is a poem that refuses to look away."
"These poems have killer lines: "I'll tell you about fourth grade, twisting / Russell's arm behind him, turning him / until he saw a new side of himself"; "Without [the mole], all our landmarks shifted", etc. A strong, visceral collection."
-Iron Horse Literary Review Editors
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"Poetry that cuts you on purpose then hands you a Kleenex and a band-aid."
-Joanne Spencer, Author and Reviewer, The Review Review
"I read The Collective by Jacob Little in the new Pithead Chapel and then I read it again. Crusher."
-Meredith Alling, Author of Sing the Song
“This essay is quiet in the way of Cathedrals on a New York City afternoon—[Little's] voice a low hum in the reader’s ears, giving the sense not of inner peace so much as relative respite from the chaos and noise and bustle outside the essay... [Little's] reflective consideration of his time at Circle K proves the rule that an essay can, and perhaps should, find the deepest human truths within the most mundane of human experiences.”
"[Little's] work shows a sharp eye for the telling detail, for the meaningful nuance that evokes and haunts."
-Cathy Day, Contest Judge and Author of The Circus in Winter and Comeback Season: How I Learned to Play the Game of Love
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