American Happiness is an eclectic collection of verse from a bold poet of everyday life, Jacqueline Allen Trimble. Ironically titled, the work addresses everything from the death of parents to racial tension to the encroachment of coyotes into urban spaces. The title is taken from a poem in the book which considers the kinder, gentler exploits of Sheriff Andy and Deputy Barney during a time when Southern law enforcement was neither universally kind nor gentle. Says Trimble, "Barney had one bullet/and no need for a rope./The only burning he did was for his Thelma Lou." On her poetic journey, which takes us from the personal to the political, Trimble probes our racial divide. She is by turns compassionate and fierce, cutting at our hypocrisy with the knife of her words and willing us toward our better common humanity.
"It is cause for celebration that Ms. Trimble is making poetry which is timely and timeless, elegant and brutal, wise and innocent. Highly recommended."
Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama and Georgia Bottoms
"Jacqueline Trimble is fiercely dedicated to turning everyday life into poetry. She is 'washing off a brown boot/or dozing on a screened porch/or cutting biscuits with a cup/or dreaming of another life/when she stops and takes the knife.' With the incisive knife of her poetry, she also probes America's racial divide: 'Oh, my beloved country, what is to become of us,/Caught as we are in our own ima
Andrew Hudgins, author of Probably After the Lost War
"Jacqueline Trimble's treatment of the paradoxical quality of love, of the pain of living and dying, of the blood of black history, and of a flirtation with the existential and transcendental -- these and more are written with clarity, power, beauty, and grace. American Happiness is a must read."
Leonard A. Slade, Jr., Professor of Africana Studies and English, State University of New
"In her debut collection, American Happiness, Jacqueline Trimble escorts readers on a poetic journey with Alabama culture ever-present throughout a narrative of, not only (re)memory, but discovery as well. Trimble skillfully (re)imagines her Southern heritage while using tropes within this heritage to discourse on the larger world. Trimble reminds us of the epiphanies humans create by living a full life. There is a jewel of a poet in the epicenter of Alabama who adeptly revisits the ugly of race, the power and legacy of familial bonds, the joys and beauty of growing up Southern-our complicated humanity. Say her name: Jacqueline Trimble."
