If you’re looking for something unique, Stephen Kagarise’s Approved Jawbone is a series of prose poems that track complex, shifting ties and everyday public declarations found in documents. Piecing together fragments, the collection assembles text to capture the unpredictable friction of human courtships. The main spark happens when formal public updates cross paths with private expressions of longing, creating sudden standoffs between formal 19th-century language and personal romantic desire. While poems like 'Dear, Darling Mimmie' and 'Thy Words Are Like to Honey' capture the fleeting tension between potential partners, it also pivots in 'Thank God, I Am Well Now', where it ends up trading romantic longing for public rants about political farces and gossip. It reads like a creative collage of print scraps, blending public updates and intense bursts of yearning to show just how random and haphazard communication can be across a bygone era.

Stephen Kagarise’s Approved Jawbone is an excellent volume of experimental prose poetry that stands out by blending old-fashioned vocabulary with broken-up romantic themes. The layout of the poems moves along with a really unpredictable pace, never letting you fall into an easy, expected lyric rhythm. Because it borrows directly from old clippings, the style creates an unusual, choppy movement where public notices twist into short, packed observations on pining and people. Every piece feels carefully put together, mixing random local news blurbs right next to quick, passionate bursts of longing and intimate affection. The choice of words belongs to the 19th century, but the way they are stacked feels fresh and entirely different from standard love poetry. Going through these pages is like looking into a foggy old printing office window while people chatter and comically bicker about their courtships out on the sidewalk. It’s a great choice if you like creative poetry and want to see 19th-century texts get turned into new art.

Approved Jawbone by Stephen Kagarise moves through twenty-three short poems set in a snowbound frontier world. A credulous tenderfoot chases a mythical mountain of gold, and a girl leans on a fence and sighs while the ice thickens. A man crushed by a falling stone insists he can still do plenty, and a giant powder works blows up without hurting anyone. A dead man shows signs of life on the morning of his burial, and a woman cannot find a nickname ending in “ie.” A czar makes promises, Chen Shu Tang haggles over a price, and the river freezes along the shore. Snowdrifts pile up until burials are threatened, while an expert catches enough cold to last all winter. A final newspaper clipping from The Daily Astorian, dated February 9, 1881, shows a young man answering a lady with a joke at his own expense.

Approved Jawbone by Stephen Kagarise treats old newspaper language like clay, and the result is a funny, strange mirror of public life. Each poem is a single unrhymed block of about nine to eleven lines, so the page looks like a newspaper column. Lines break mid-thought, and sentences crash into each other: “Five cars passed over his body, but it does not necessarily follow that he can do nothing.” Deadpan juxtaposition is the main device, and it works as dark comedy. Panics, monopolies, war, and courtship swirl together, and “A great big humbug, you answer, yes” could caption any news cycle today. Winter acts like a refrain, with ice, snow, and burial returning from poem to poem, while Shakespearean echoes such as “who would fardels bear” add a wink of literary play. The Sydney epigraph and the closing clipping frame the book between romance and wit. Best for fans of found poetry, history buffs, and readers who like dry humor.

Approved Jawbone by Stephen Kagarise is a thought-provoking read. This compilation includes twenty-three short, intriguing pieces. The first entry, ‘The Usual Winter Mildness’, juxtaposes a young poet’s aspirations for greatness with winter’s harshness. ‘A Splendid Stereoscopic View’, the second poem, speaks of the resilience of men despite facing crushing adversity. The third poem, ‘Add Gallantry to the Line’, outlines the possible risks of being a gentleman. The last poem, ‘Seems Determined to Close Up’, concludes the poet’s journey. It highlights poetry’s lack of profits as a stumbling block that inspires creativity. All the poems feature words and phrases from The Daily Astorian, a historic newspaper. A comedic excerpt from The Astorian, February 9, 1881 issue, is included as part of the back matter.

I enjoyed reading Approved Jawbone. Stephen Kagarise’s word choice is superbly poetic. Most, if not all, of his poems employ vivid imagery. I especially liked the opening line of ‘One Reynolds Being a Test Case’. “Smoke curls directly heavenwards” flows beautifully into the rest of the story. I think it was a great choice to structure all the poems as prose because they tell interesting stories. Additionally, they are all well-paced. I am glad the stories in these poems highlight important themes such as religion, gender expectations, taxation, death, justice, and happiness. Kagarise’s work inspires conversations about all these topics without strongly influencing my opinion. After reading Approved Jawbone, I felt motivated to write experimental poetry. I highly recommend this book to all poetry enthusiasts.

Stephen Kagarise’s Approved Jawbone is a collection of short poems where brevity is the charm and description the sustenance. Rather than building toward a single narrative, the collection offers brief, distinct encounters that are displayed as small verbal prods inviting the reader to pause, reread, and savor a lingering thought after each one. The title itself is a bit of a tease -- what are we to understand by an ‘approved jawbone'? It could be the subject of elective surgery, but not likely given the verses that follow. The poems are suited to this ‘whatever could this mean?’ type of plot couched in an atmosphere that is direct yet curious, and a little off-kilter.

Stephen Kagarise favors immediacy over elaborate scene-setting. Each of these verses is a delightful story in itself, at once complete and leaving the reader wanting more. That spareness can feel playful, even mischievous, but it also gives the collection an underlying strangeness. Because the pieces are short, the reading experience is less like settling into a long narrative and more like moving through a sequence of snapshots. Some may strike more sharply than others, and the gaps between them become part of the pleasure. The brevity is not a substitute for depth so much as an invitation to look closely. Approved Jawbone will appeal to readers who enjoy concise, unconventional poetry and don’t need every image resolved. It is a compact, unusual collection with an independent voice, best approached with an open mind and a willingness to let each poem remain a little mysterious.