The Only Thing That Matters

Poetry, Syracuse University Press, 2013

“The poems in Kim Jensen’s powerful new collection have the speed and instability of linguistic particles traveling outwards from a primal collision: light with darkness, oppression with liberty, doubt with certainty, and faith with its impossible Other. Occupying a tense, fugitive space, the poems step off from the ideas and vocabulary of radical poet and novelist, Fanny Howe into startling new formulations. Compact and evocative, Jensen’s lyrics are marked by the intensity of their moral commitment to matters of the world and matters of the heart.  This is an important work, offering glimpses of what might be possible —if only the love, faith, and compassion that sustain us could themselves be sustained.”–Book Description

“In a time when the ordinary and the predictable prevail in poetry, this collection by Kim Jensen gives us a truly original poetry of witness. In its very genesis, Jensen’s work articulates an engagement that is playful and innovative, yet willful and defiant. There are quickenings in here, walk-alongs within walk-alongs. Finely crafted and marvelously inventive, these poems sing and hiss and howl. They enliven and push and love.”—Naomi Ayala, author of Wild Animals on the Moon and This Side of Early

“By applying a complex algorithm to fellow poet Fanny Howe’s work, Kim Jensen creates poems that honor Howe’s directive to reinstate words in the world by “…liturgy or random encounters.” Like the medieval women writers who included passages from other women authors in their own works, Jensen’s homage results in poetry as a form of hospitality, a way of being truly open to the world. “Ordinary speech seems like a sin to me,” writes Jensen, so she gifts us with this miraculous celebration of all that is both spiritual and worldly.”–Tina Darragh, author of Striking Resemblance

“In this lucid collection, Kim Jensen moves between intimate address and an engagement with the world, connecting perception with perception with subtlety and distinction. Jensen’s deftness in creating her own ‘poetic logic’ offers pleasing jolts of surprise in a conceptual project that is original and compelling.” —Elizabeth Robinson, author of The Orphan and Its Relations

Bread Alone

Poetry, Syracuse University Press, 2009

“In this provocative collection, Kim Jensen gives voice to the struggle of those who seek love in a world saturated with brutality and aggression. Using accessible language and raw imagery, this work offers a searing portrait of the ruins of love and war. The concise lyrics in Bread Alone condemn the violence in Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon, while exploring the intimate consequences of these and other injustices. Darkly humorous, grotesque, sorrowful, outraged, and sometimes poignantly hopeful, these poems possess a strange beauty and remind us of the key purposes of poetry—to warn and to revive our sense of conscience and connection.” –Book Description“

This powerful work reproduces the shock of the life that millions of people lead in silence, in darkness. These poems can wake up a rock.”—Etel Adnan, author of Sitt Marie Rose

“Kim Jensen’s poems are searing and spare. They will haunt you and stretch your vision. You won’t be the same person after reading them that you were before.”
—Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Habibi and Going, Going

“In a time of news about war we can only reflect the devastation of others. What comes in can’t come out. True resistance seems muted, dissolved. Here we arrive at just such a landscape, but perhaps because it is a woman’s terrain, we are at least given bread.”—Fanny Howe

“Throughout Bread Alone, Jensen trusts verbal economy, and the concise force of her pieces–most are but a page long–lends them a stealth force…that sear themselves into the brain as indelible imagery.”—Bret McCabe, Arts Editor, Baltimore City Paper

The Woman I Left Behind

Novel, Curbstone Press, 2006

An experimental & poetic novel about a turbulent love affair between a young American woman and a Palestinian man. Finalist for Forward Magazine’s Book of the Year

“The Woman I Left Behind is a poetically written novel about a turbulent love affair between a young American woman and a Palestinian refugee. When Irene, an intelligent, committed and discerning student meets Khalid, a Palestinian refugee now living in Southern California, she immediately knows that this man would cause her both immense pain and joy. Coming from separate worlds that are at odds with each other, both Irene and Khalid have to overcome their cultural differences. Irene comes to realize that she has to break free from her parents’ norms and values and lead a more meaningful life, a life not guided by superficialities but by a sense of commitment and purpose. With its detailed depictions of modern Palestinian history, as well as its cast of colorful characters—from Palestinian feminists to American cyberpunks—Kim Jensen’s novel reiterates the vital connections between politics, the imagination, and the most intimate aspects of our lives.”

 “A beautifully written and promising first novel”—Middle East Studies Association Bulletin

“This is a revolutionary love story, set in the present and written in a transparent prose style that doesn’t give exaggeration, embellishment or sentimentality any room. Its frank politics, and its cold appraisal of whiteness, are rare in contemporary American writing. That is, the story has an unapologetic commitment to social change. The struggle between Irene and Khalid is almost equal in strength and therefore almost without a victory; the powers keep shifting. The truth given by this story is that a victory by one would mean an implicit defeat for BOTH of them. This is the lesson, critical to our time: that the sustaining of balance between warriors is an act of love. This is an important book for the years ahead.” –Fanny Howe

“This is a love story with an edge to it, a novel that is daring in style and content, a riveting exploration of the place where politics, culture and psychology intersect, where a history of wars collides with everyday life.”—Jordan Times

“Jensen’s description is artistic, her voice honest, her politics informed…[an] excellent novel.” –Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

“Ms. Jensen does a wonderful job telling this story. Achingly real, the narrative transcends the relationship it describes and becomes a poetic tale of life… The Woman I Left Behind is a novel well worth the read. –Ron Jacob in “Dissident Voice”

“Debut novelist Jensen, winner of the 2001 Raymond Carver Prize for Short Fiction, powerfully portrays Khalid’s boyhood amid the violence of the Middle East and the proud but complicated family that he either lost or left behind…the tale is well crafted, with its scenes of high drama and great sex. A first novel that offers a lot more than most. — Kirkus Reviews

“While many other American novelists continue to retreat into the safety and self-absorption of the interior life, Kim Jensen, up and coming Baltimore writer, fearlessly, looks beyond the individual, and beyond our nation, to capture the true complexities of love in the modern world. Fearless in both language and scope, Jensen’s debut novel, The Woman I Left Behind, explores the relationship between an American and a Palestinian exile, who, despite their best intentions, discover that there can be no separation between political and personal identity, even in matters of the heart.”—Susan McCallum-Smith, Baltimore Urbanite

“Packed with politics and sensuality, warm as bread baked in a Palestinian village bakery, and passionate as a California’s purple jacaranda, The Woman I left Behind is a marvelously told tale, a timely offering for American and Arab readers to view themselves in the other’s intimate and unsparing mirror.”—Sharif Elmusa, Al-Ahram Weekly

“In The Woman I Left Behind, Kim Jensen creates a compelling portrait of the life of young Sayeed, who loses his parents to war and occupation. This powerful narrative conveys the poverty, chaos, and pain—as well as the spirited resistance of his community in a way I had not felt before. It was hard to put this book down.” Penny Rosenwasser, author of Voices from a ‘Promised Land’: Palestinian & Israeli Peace Activists Speak Their Hearts.