Eliz­a­beth Jacob­son is an award-win­ning for­mer Poet Lau­re­ate of San­ta Fe, New Mex­i­co. Her fifth book of poet­ry, There Are as Many Songs in the World as Branch­es of Coral, is a sub­stan­tial col­lec­tion, rich in lan­guage and imagery of water, desert, and wood­land. The book explores how a life­time is shaped as much by our nat­ur­al sur­round­ings as it is by the roles we play and the expe­ri­ences we con­scious­ly claim as significant.

The open­ing poem, ​“Quan­tum Foam,” sets a wide cos­mic, mys­ti­cal per­spec­tive for the col­lec­tion: ​“even a jar void of sub­stance holds empti­ness as if it were full.” The same per­spec­tive is found in the poem ​“Fair Trade”: ​“the first rule of nature is things dete­ri­o­rate / before they get a chance to become whole.” Jux­ta­posed with this wide lens are close-ups of life’s grit­ti­ness in poems like ​“Canyon Road,” where the every­day mun­dane is exact­ly where the sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence exists: ​“his abdomen torn open. / The canine holds my gaze”; and like ​“Very Long Mar­riage with Lac­er­a­tions,” which describes ​“the chil­dren, born long ago now, born into/​blood and shit soaked sheets.” Divid­ed into three sec­tions — Rhap­sodies, Lul­la­bies, and Devo­tion­als — this col­lec­tion is not about oppo­sites but about inte­gra­tion through contrast.

Jacobson’s writ­ing is sen­so­ry-filled and evokes the plea­sure of the nat­ur­al world. In ​“The Sweet­ness of Each Other’s Bod­ies,” the speak­er tells us:

Yes­ter­day I gath­ered the hon­ey­bees in my gloved hands,

dropped them into jars,

and dust­ed them with pow­dered sug­ar to kill the mites.

The bees became ecsta­t­ic when released,

ate the sweet­ness off each other’s bodies.

Read­ers of this col­lec­tion will learn more about insect and bird behav­ior as well as human behav­ior. Inter­spersed are moments of wit. For exam­ple, ​“Like, what’s for din­ner” is a con­cert of clever human and bird voic­es. There is pain, too; the sec­ond sec­tion nar­rates a child­hood of grief. In ​“Cement,” we learn that ​“I start­ed to pick lit­tle holes in / my brother’s clothes with my teeth.”

The open­ing poem of the third sec­tion brings read­ers to the book’s title poem, remind­ing us that what lives behind in the per­son­al expe­ri­ence weighs heavy: 

I walk a long way

sink­ing in soft sand.

My feet, two creatures

of bur­den.

When the speak­er men­tions vis­it­ing Birke­nau lat­er in the poem, read­ers will under­stand the col­lec­tive bur­den instantly..

Towards the end of the col­lec­tion, ​“Every­day Order of Back­yard Crea­tures,” takes us back to the theme of per­spec­tive fea­tured in open­ing pieces: ​“and I stand there, / lan­guage swirling around in my head, a chaos / of enchant­ment and refusal.”