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Rae Hoffman Jager’s debut collection American Bitch is an defiantly wry and tender search for home at its essence, a sarcastic suburban reflection of the mystical against the painful mundane, shouted from the sharp tongue of “an atheist… woman full of witchcraft,” with a “prayer—muted by the suburban song of un-rescue.” Against the backdrop of patriarchal oppression cloaked as football, and climate disasters calving icebergs, Jager says “I wanted to become a house, a house… Right now, I am a house for my daughter, a mass of cells I cannot name, whose name I have not found yet, and that I live in… For now, while you are another hungry organ inside of me, I give you a tour of this city. You’ll one day learn too how to love something broken.” She invites her daughter and the reader to, “Open your eyes… Unfold and taste the first betrayal of this world.” This raw motherhood sings deep and visceral, screams like a fox in the wild-mooned night, clings in our consciousness like “ivy growing up the sides, not letting go.”
- Kai Coggin, author of Mining for Stardust, Incandescent, and Wingspan

Early in American Bitch, Rae Hoffman Jager ponders “How do you explain / that one puncture is all it takes / to make a vacuum,” and throughout the collection we see those punctures pile up—in sexual violence, in unsustainable climate change, in the cruelty of men and the systems that reward that cruelty. But within all of this there is also the hope we will survive; despite what our own myths say about ourselves, the narrator tells her unborn child “You’ll one day learn / too how to love something broken.” Whether it’s meditations on Judaism, football, or motherhood, Jager states “if I can celebrate anything, I will.” And she does in this important new collection. -Erin Elizabeth Smith, author of Down

I do not know if poetry is supposed to tell the truth, but I suspect that it should to come from it. I believe that the readers can feel the truth in the center of a poem. That feeling, that vibration is what makes American Bitch, by Rae Hoffman Jager, a haunting collection of poetry. In these poems about pregnancy, family history, American culture, religious life, anti-Semitism, the ever-present patriarchy, and poetry itself, all the emotions and reflections are entirely raw. Still, every word is carefully chosen, every poem beautifully crafted. We, the readers, listen to a mother talking to the child still inside her womb: For now, while you are another/ hungry organ inside of me, I give you/ a tour of this city. You’ll one day learn/ too how to love something broken, and we do it, too. We love the brokenness that Rae Hoffman Jager makes us face in this book, one extraordinary text after another. -Manuel Iris, author of The Parting Silence and Translating Silence

Rae Hoffman Jager’s American Bitch is a love song to the unlikely pairing of mothering and football, a dirge against a warming/weirding planet, anti-Semitism, and the oppressive and ever-present patriarchy. In “Wreaked,” Jager reminds us that “while we slept, made oatmeal ... a crack in the ice shelf grew eleven miles.” These are ferociously tender and tenderly ferocious poems. We’re reminded there are “razors in the bathroom, / bleach beneath the kitchen sink,” but also cardinals to admire, a chance to “see who is wooing who, [to] count how many fragile talons can fit /on one branch.” Cities are flooding and burning, “everything feels as heavy as a Magnolia Blossom’s smell,” yet there’s the miracle of birth, a daughter who “came into this world fist first.” Someone or something is always harshing her buzz, yet the speaker’s determination to thrive is palpable: “I’ll play the guitar. My daughter will shake a musical egg.” American Bitch is the book to turn to as the droughts worsen and the seas rise. -Martha Silano, author of Gravity Assist, Little Office of Immaculate Conception, Reckless Lovely, and more

“The poems of Rae Hoffman Jager are so brash, rambunctious, and stand-up funny, and yet so inextricably threaded with poignancy and elegy, they’re like…well, like real life. You’ll find it a pleasure to spend some time with her bodacious voice and vision.”

–Albert Goldbarth

More thoughts on Rae Hoffman Jager's work

A book review by Barton Smock at Isacoustic

A Spotlight on Rae Hoffman Jager by Intentional Acts of Kindness Blog

National Poetry Month with Rae Hoffman Jager by Gilly Flower Writings