Hunting, by Caleb Jagoda

Poetry, chapbook, 20 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Caleb Jagoda’s Hunting is a family heirloom buried in the corner of the attic, the finding of which conjures a wellspring of memories. Here, poems whisper alongside a Montana riverbank, chortle at an uncle’s quirky taxidermy, glisten in a fish’s sliced-open flesh, “orange as torchlight.” The book’s title is used both as visceral experience and sharp analogy; every poem is a hunt—for purpose, for identity, for home.

At the crux of Hunting is the speaker’s relationship with his father—one that, like so many paternal relationships, is defined more by actions than words. Jagoda remembers duck hunting, trout fishing, and splitting wood with his father, capturing the texture of these moments in musical, image-driven verse. As the speaker reconciles received truths and traditions, traveling from rural Indiana to New England’s industrial seacoast to the shrub grasslands of Montana, poems don’t so much judge as they contemplate the wonder of it all. Hunting is a soothing odyssey of identity—a reminder of the “thousand stars in your pocket, signaled to you by different people.”

Caleb Jagoda is a poet, journalist, and MFA candidate at the University of New Hampshire. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blue Earth Review, Santa Clara Review, Y2K Quarterly, and Down East Magazine, among other places. He lives in Dover, New Hampshire, and is big on the internet: www.calebjagoda.com.