In his first collection of poetry, Looting Versailles, Jake Sheff explores everything from a “nipple” on the “supermoon” to “hide-and-seek” with “drunkards”. Throughout the collection, Jake wages intrapersonal battles that texturize a heightened awareness of interpersonal realities. As the reader forges through the book, they encounter a wide range of surfaces—rough, smooth, slippery, soft—and these surfaces all work together to keep the reader on solid ground, even when they’re called upon to compare a “skull” to “an object for bludgeoning”. At times playful, at times grave, and always spry, Jake uses fresh colors on a colossal palette to tickle the underbelly of his readers’ desires. By the end of the collection, the reader will come to fully appreciate the creative force of “a de Kooning brushstroke / On a Nighthawks print”.
