“This book renews my faith in poetry and introduces
Brittany N. Jaekel as a major poetic talent. The poems in
The Witch’s Mouth seem to arise whole from the music of
the body—a woman’s body prone to flooding, capable of
making life and just as quickly losing it. The grief in these
poems is like an inner liquid, but the poems reach down
through grief to become taproots of ancient human truth.
The speaker becomes a witch-poet not because she chooses
to, but because she’s had to carry both life and death across
the thresholds. A lesser poet would turn these experiences
into platitudes or abstractions, but Jaekel traces her losses
honestly through textures and beauty, filling our mouths
with the ‘grass-hair of the hill’ and ‘crinkling bonesongs.’
These radiant, elemental poems are a gift.”

—Rachel Jamison Webster, author of Mary is a River 

“In her powerful debut collection, Jaekel reveals a haunting
landscape of feminine experience in fairytalesque rendition. Floods, pregnancy, plague, commutes on the El and a visit to the Anne Frank house are all vehicles to ferry us to unimaginable loss where ‘the white sky bandage covers each field.’ Throughout, the speaker is visited by echoes of grief recognizable in every gesture, small or large, person-focused or nature-centric. Ultimately, Jaekel shows us the only way is through our most devastating experiences, and we are surprised when ‘an axial change will shift the light’ bringing ‘unexpected sun.’ Jaekel embraces an image-rich brevity, leans away from sentimentality and demonstrates that white space is as impactful as the right word. On the other side, we are changed, but with the stark knowledge that this all can and will happen again.”

—Nicole Borg, author of All Roads Lead Home