Poetry. Introduction by Stephen Dunn. "In her wonderful book JAM - a title evocative of jazz and trouble, Joe-Anne McLaughlin pitches and tunes her poems to a wide range of emotional experience, often in the same poem blending the tawdry, the playful, the ruefully sublime. Though her subject matter is indeed often troubling, what I find myself admiring is how her syntactical and musical gifts regularly make what's troubling aesthetically pleasurable, and how they mitigate bold claimsà There's a sense that McLaughlin has lived her poems, but also has lived WITH her poems, and that is in part why JAM distinguishes itself. It is a most impressive achievement" - Stephen Dunn.