The World Began With Yes

"From the vigor of the political to the complications of religion, from the purity of the spiritual to the riot of the body, The World Began With Yes wakes us up to say, "Yes!" Jong's poems brim with language that is supple and fierce, elegant and wise—all of it creating a feast of joy. Here we have everything great poetry is meant to be." —Linda Gray Sexton, author of Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton and Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide

"Erica Jong's new collection of poetry is, as its title suggests, both affirmative and exhilarating. Whether she is writing about her grandchildren, the loss of her mother, or an Alice Munro stamp, Jong's images are always vividly evocative. Her poems are filled with an equal awareness of the sensuous nature of life and its inevitable decline. This is the work of a poet in her prime, filled with candor and wisdom." —Daphne Merkin

"A forever fan and devoted student of Erica Jong’s poetry, her work has inspired me for as long as I can remember. Her newest book simmers with passion, wisdom, and joy. Enter her 'red forest of love' and drink the poetry of Erica Jong—each poem ripe with life, each one a kiss, a slap awake, an embrace, a memory and reminder that lust, longing, and desire are the architects of love. Erica tells us, 'plenty & poetry' are all we need, and here we have it—a 'climax of language, like lovemaking, bringing peace.' Say 'yes,' to this collection and let the world begin." —Kim Dower, Former Poet Laureate of West Hollywood, Author of four books of poetry including Last Train to the Missing Planet and Sunbathing on Tyrone Power’s Grave

"Erica Jong, best known for her novels starting with Fear of Flying, is a poet of long standing and of renown. When the squib in the Book Review of The New York Times mentioned that her latest book of verse dealt in part with astrophysics, I took a look. . . Scientists can enjoy the poetry, and I hope that others enjoy the bits of science." —Jay M. Pasachoff ,director of the Hopkins Observatory and Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College

"In The World Began with Yes, it is as though Jong is trying to physically touch us with her words, to wake us, hug us, spank us. The Yes poems go mano a mano, toe to toe, skin to skin with their readers and are a right continuation of Jong’s mission to free the female body, to claim the full rights of our physicality, to endow us with the zipless joy of communion, union, sex. There is a transcendence beyond the fears of #metoo and the defiant waves of feminism, a hope for a joyous and liberating us. If we are to fight, then we are to remember what we fight for, the rush of dandelions, the effortless fall of rose petals, the knowledge of ourselves and the other as we dance the poet’s Sufi dance." —'A Desire for Wholeness, the Wholeness of Desire: The World Began with Yes' Larissa Shmailo's article for North of Oxford

"Erica Jong’s new book of poetry is inspiring, uplifting, exciting, stimulating, engrossing—piercing. These new poems of Erica’s light up the page with tears and shouts, with wounds and exclamations, with yes, yes! That is it, that is what I feel, what I imagined, what I dreamed. Ms. Jong says she culled these poems from those she has written over the last decades, poems whose writing keeps her alive. That is what poetry is for, to keep us alive, to wake us up!! Erica has done that for me again today, kept me alive, breathing, weeping, shouting at the page, “Yes!!” This is what it takes to make a poem, to make a life. Right on the money, right on the edge, right on the heart, right on the breath, The World Began With Yes is the real deal.

Get it and read it. You need it. We all need it. In this time of agitation and fear, you will fly with Erica Jong—she brings us back to what matters—the heart, the mind, the head, the imagination—the 'Yes' of life." —Judy Collins