Jacques J. Rancourt is the author of two poetry collections, Brocken Spectre (Alice James Books) and Novena (Pleiades Press), as well as a chapbook, In the Time of PrEP (Beloit Poetry Journal). Raised in Maine, he lives in San Francisco with his partner and the world’s most anxious dog. Set in San Francisco, Brocken Spectre examines the way the past presses up against the present. The speaker, raised in the wake of the AIDS crisis, engages with ideas of belatedness, of looking back to a past that cannot be inhabited, of the ethics of memory, and of the dangers in memorializing and romanticizing tragedy.
Read more →