Rob Jacques’s poetry collection Dust and Dragons (Fernwood Press, 2023) is a captivating exploration of the human experience, life’s balance of the good and bad, and the dichotomy between the metaphorical dust and dragons. Of the dust, Jacques writes of the dull and repetitious parts of life with resignation and questioning, but also with a dreamy, wistful tone that seems to relish in the meaningless. Of the dragons, Jacques captures the fear and unpredictable parts of life that make living intoxicating.
Dust and Dragons reflects on the spectrum of struggle and peace that life has to offer; Jacques navigates the complexities between innocence and experience, faith and doubt, love and the illusion of it, as he seeks to understand the intricate experiences of human existence.
In the collection’s name-sake, “Dust and Dragons,” Jacques writes of the way time falls like dirt, “coating, covering human help or hurt, / falling invisibly through air, through the mind” (15). Throughout this first poem of the book, he establishes the definitions and duties of life’s “dust” and “dragons.” With time being a central theme connected to Jacques’ dust metaphor, he analyzes the way time works to cloud like dust, saying,
“See it resting on passion. See it lying about
On love. On hope. On promises and prospects
Formed in the heyday of youth before doubt
Became the norm for all tomorrows.” (15)
Introducing the concept of the metaphorical dragon, Jacques continues,
“Dust previously hiding all things pure and strange,
dust grievously smashed and cleansed away by
dragons, dragons making us awake and aware
painfully, frighteningly, of our being only clay.” (15)
Here, the reader is introduced to the notion that chaos has the capability of revealing. The verses suggest that the chaos symbolized by the dragon’s fire—while highly feared and destructive, it also illuminates, providing clarity.
Using dust to represent the mundane, describing it as “pure and strange,” the dragon’s work as an agent of chaos is introduced to clear the dust away, suggesting that calamity is a necessary evil to live life fully and subsequently fairly. This poem introduces the poignant reflection necessary to chart the rest of collection with, forcing introspection out of the reader and questioning how the one navigates through, or balances the dust and the dragons.
Jacques allows the most natural human experiences to be isolated and picked apart, questioning the significance in insignificance. In “Once Upon a Time…” Jacques writes, “I saw a smile for the first time and I law awhile / in the arms of innocence, in the hands of simplicity, / imagining my early moments” (17). Sometimes the dragons are simple new discoveries, emphasizing the importance of experiencing the world—not just for the sake of growing, but to find new joy.
One of the greatest masterpieces of this collection is “A Good Day,” where Jacques captures the beauty of dust, suggesting that it is foolish to not appreciate the dusty, regular, unexpectant noons. It is thoughtless to assume that just because so many noons are similar that they are not special, that their slowness cannot be great. Jacques eloquently encapsulates these moments, writing,
“I want this noon to be like all noons
dividing light in halves, marking before
and after, sitting midway in diurnal circles,
the morning history, a remembered past,
the afternoon promise, hastening vast.”
…
Give it to me all blank to be written on
with indelible inks of blood and love,
a time never to be relegated to a shelf,
unending palimpsest, living never stayed,
malleable moments ever on parade.” (27)
Exploring the cyclic nature of time, with each noon carrying a piece of the past and a promise of the future, Jacques suggests that each moment carries layers, ongoing, and evolving—building upon what came before to entice what can become. This concept reinforces the idea that moments, even of apparent simplicity, contribute to the richness of living. The call to embrace life, find joy amid its brevity, is recurring throughout Dust and Dragons. Through beautifully lyrical versus, there is encouragement to be fully engaged, to appreciate love, to celebrate moments underscores the philosophy of this work.
The setting of Jacques’s poems are central to many pieces throughout, talking at first of witnessing the earth and the life on it, and then reflecting on it. In “Thatcher Island, Rockport, Massachusetts,” he writes,
“Today we row through danger to picnic,
laugh and dance, play at hiding, unaware
of the panicked, the drowned, the dead
whose bones rot our feet, the remains
of sailors’ forgotten stories abiding there.” (23)
Jacques beckons readers to contemplate the inherent volatility of life, raising the potential of its meaninglessness that paradoxically holds the transformative power to create profound significance. He uses examples like the light that passes through the midday; it never seems to change but has the great power to remind and to promise another noon.
Dust and Dragons outlines the injustice of not living life to the fullest extent possible. Jacques encourages readers to push limits and to discover, to feel pain from the dragons and to feel peace from the dust. A sincerely introspective collection of poetry that forces thought, demands emotion, and inspires action out of its readers, Dust and Dragons is an excellent collection on the depth that life may offer, an ode to resilience, and a celebration of the ordinary.
Dust and Dragons is available at Fernwood Press
Caitlin Mulqueen is a senior at the University of Tennessee majoring in English and Journalism. She loves reading, playing piano, watching sports, and the Oxford comma. She has worked as an Editorial Graphics Production intern at ESPN, is a copy editor at The Daily Beacon, a student writer for Tennessee Athletics, a graphics and video operator for the SEC Network, and a marketing/social media intern for the Knoxville Ice Bears. With the majority of her undergraduate work being in sports media, literary media has remained her sincerest passion, finding stories that come out of sports to be as moving as those from literature.
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