A Stranger to My Purpose - Paperback

by Anagh Banerjee (Illustrator), Jacob David Snyder (Author)

A poetry collection in three acts, a stranger to my purpose follows the narrator's journey through space, time and fantasy in search of lost love, and the true purpose he finds along the way. Featuring art by award-winning illustrator Anagh Banerjee.

Jacob David Snyder's debut collection, a stranger to my purpose, literally moves from elegy through effigy to apogee and beyond, examining the luminous vanishings that make up a life. Snyder refuses "to play at permanency" as he reaches out and feels "the passenger seat / still warm," and contemplates the fact that "there are no postcards / where i've been." Where this poet has been is the matryoshka doll of guttural retch, the writhe and churn-the pathless ascent-of existence, the unraveling strangeness of being in a body in an empty cityscape where the hollow becomes hallowed. Snyder tells us: "there is a cage / for all things / for birds and wind and laughter..." Reading these poems, I felt like I was looking through the tiny bars of that cage, letting some free and windy chaos blow back my hair, allowing the fractals and arpeggios of absence and loss break into birdsong and breeze and guffaw in my cheekbones. Perhaps this is Snyder's purpose after all. Dante Di Stefano, author of Midwhistle

This is one of the most powerful and poignant poetry collections that's come out within the past few years. a stranger to my purpose is a deeply moving exploration of alienation, home, love, desire, and loss. Golnoosh Nour, author of Impure Thoughts

Jacob David Snyder's a stranger to my purpose is a wonderfully experimental, lyric, aching collection that takes readers on a poignant and lush journey of loss and heartbreak. . .Ultimately, Snyder is a poet who understands that the world we live in is one full of riddles more than it is answers, and is wisely inquisitive throughout. This is a collection you don't want to miss. Loisa Fenichell, author of Wandering In All Directions Of This Earth

Written in elegant lowercase, Snyder's poems showcase raw emotion mixed with experimentation, their forms shifting with a measured playfulness. At once devastating and exquisite, a stranger to my purpose evokes Keats' immortal equation: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -that is all." An outstanding debut collection. Charlie Baylis, author of a fondness for the colour green