SOURCE: Mason, David. “Poetry Chronicle.” The Hudson Review 49, no. 1 (spring 1996): 166-75.

In the following excerpt, Mason admires the “precision” and “formal affirmations” of Jacobsen's poetry, but criticizes its sometimes awkward and opaque language.

Josephine Jacobsen, on the other hand, has been trying hard all her long life; her new collection [In the Crevice of Time] charts both her restlessness and her achievement. While Charles Wright's work takes on a formal and intellectual uniformity that becomes fruitlessly repetitive, Ms. Jacobsen has never fallen into such a rut. Born in Canada in 1908, but long a citizen of this country, she has flirted with several modern literary trends—including surrealism and the sort of linguistic diffidence we see in Wright—without ever losing her head to them. By remaining a maker, she rescues her poems from self-parody; she understands the material value of verse, free or measured. Frequently compared to Marianne...