Intersecting Orbits, by Nancy K. Jentsch

Poetry, chapbook, 32 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

In Intersecting Orbits, the author’s sense of awe is never in question. In fact, the poems in this chapbook often catch her looking up at the sky, be it in wonder or in supplication.

In 2020, with no Smartphone in hand and a grandchild on the way, Nancy K. Jentsch began writing poems to capture what can’t be seen through a camera lens, but is just as worthy of being remembered as photos kept in an album. These snapshot poems, seven-line poems of seven syllables each, document the beginning of her journey with her first grandchild.

Twelve of these poems are included in Intersecting Orbits where they are complemented by related poems that comment on Jentsch’s experience of rural life, a life that knows not only breath-taking sunsets and lush meadows but also rainy days and even the memory of a childhood snakebite.

Nancy K. Jentsch’s chapbook Authorized Visitors and the collaborative ekphrastic chapbook Frame and Mount the Sky, in which her poetry appears, were published in 2017. Her collection Between the Rows debuted in 2022. Since she began to write in 2008, her work has appeared in journals such as Amethyst Review, Crowstep Poetry Journal, Tiferet Journal, and Zingara Poetry Review. In 2020, she received an Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Retired after 37 years of teaching, she finds a bounty of inspiration in her family and her rural home. More information is available on her website: https://jentsch8.wixsite.com/my-site.