Jane Rosenberg LaForge’s words lead us from room to room; grandmother, the “heart patient” who would be rejected for a transplant, father gone deaf going to lip-reading lessons, hospital rooms for a mother and then a sister struck by cancer. The last poem, “Time” is an extraordinary long poem which resurrects the voice of the mother after her passing. Deftly crafted and beautiful, Half-Life is a superb collection of poems, to be read and reread.
Lori Desrosiers, Three Vanities
Half-Life is a deeply beautiful book, crafted on "...the spirit level in carpentry, distinguished by/the absence of flaws in design...." Jane Rosenberg LaForge has re-invented the elegy almost as a novel, taking the reader on a journey from the desert to the ocean, from grandparent to parent to sister and to child, from life through sickness and death. With language both gorgeous and everyday, this is poetry of witness and intimacy and relation. "I have imagined/life without sense organs but I can't imagine/life without one's heart." This is an important, moving book, full of awe, humanity, and song, clearly and fearlessly in love with the language of living.
Jennifer Martelli, Apostrophe
The poems in Half-Life by Jane Rosenberg LaForge are born of living life in the midst of multiple losses and deaths, never knowing if one has hit that half-life mark yet. The poem "Wasting" about the speaker's sister's cancer begins: "Close to the bone is where/this sisterhood will end." Close to the bone is where all of these poems live.
Malaika King Albrecht, Redheaded Stepchild Magazine
Review at Goodread's
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