"GRATITUDE DIARY delivers
acute observations
rife with gorgeous language and imagery.
It shows us how to be alive
to ourselves and to nature. . . . "
- Fran Sanders, Public Poetry
Winner of the 2025 Great Northwest Book Festival Poetry Prize
In addition to contacting the publisher for an online order,
Gratitude Diary is available at these Santa Cruz, CA, shops:
Two Birds Books in the Pleasure Point neighborhood
and Bookshop Santa Cruz, downtown.
Or check out a copy from the Santa Cruz Public Libraries.
From Erica Goss
Sticks & Stones REVIEW #110
December 2025
In her new collection of poems, Jessica Cohn uses the concept
of gratitude to organize and decipher the impressions,
experiences, conversations, and memories accumulated
during a lifetime. ~EG
Gratitude, however, is not as straightforward
as we might believe. It coexists with the unease of our times,
deflecting but never quite vanquishing our anxiety
about the state of the world. As these poems show us,
feeling grateful often requires
making uncomfortable compromises.
Dividing the book into ten sections, each titled "Day" and numbered from one to ten, Cohn groups poems dealing with topics as far-reaching as climate change, the recent global pandemic, the death of a parent, and the changes inherent to an aging body. The book opens with the first line of "Day 1:" "We have our lifelines." Cohn establishes the book's premise with the poem's penultimate lines, "I count / THINGS TO BE GRATEFUL FOR." The capitals indicate that the speaker is trying very hard to convince herself to be grateful; what comes next proves her point.
"Here, in," the poem immediately following "Day 1," finds the speaker deep in memories of family outings: "the rocks of Lake Superior still / line my dreams." The lake's beauty outshines its dangers: "On family pilgrimages, no one ever said, / Be careful, now. / It wasn't our way." The lake's violent birth, "the place / where long before, or now, / the hot plume roared," echoes something barely hidden in the speaker's family: "Mother is sad. Her past, / a vast cup of broken islands. Sometimes, / you leave home for harder arrangements."
"Body," one of the book's early poems, begins "I carry small wounds in junk drawers of the body." Memories surface, are examined, and form a life's tapestry: the "more than fifty years since that / winter I took to sketching Giacometti torsos," "there are so many ways / we do not listen to each other," and "I get confused about lifetimes." As part of the first section of Cohn's gratitude diary, this poem and "Here, in" convey a certain skepticism towards anything promising a simple solution.
This doubt continues in "The Fair Condition of the World," a poem describing our collective grief during the Covid-19 pandemic: "Now, more than a million dead, and why? For breathing." Portents, as varied as "the betrayal / of the woolly bear caterpillar" and a "Florsheim leather shoe" foretell the times to come. Later in the poem, we learn of another tragedy: "I never asked my mother much." Those questions, it appears, will never be answered. The last lines impart a sense of loss: "There's a thread / loose on my favorite throw blanket. I pull and pull, looking for the end."
Isolation and technology-assisted "socializing," hangovers from the pandemic years, continue to haunt us. In "Disembodied," Cohn evokes that time with lines that bring it back in all its awkward detail:
Life lived in gallery view
of noses, foreheads, potted plants, planted
books. How our faces go dark after hours,
like when the bag is placed over the head
before the guillotine cuts loose. How our
own electric bodies can be muted.
Cohn's talent with detail shines in "Infinitely Stranger," a poem describing an oddly exhilarating event: "a piano appeared on the cold winter / sand" of a California beach, deposited by "six leggy boys, the villagers say," who "carried the case along the bluff by the strawberry fields." The dumping of the piano, an act somewhere between vandalism and art project, becomes muse for "the curious, bored, romantic—" as it decays beautifully into the sea.
In these closely-observed poems, Cohn shows us how to look for the good, record it in some way, and keep hope alive. Gratitude Diary is a treasure trove of small moments of beauty and optimism.
"Mundane objects and daily rituals
take on a pronounced existence
as she looks at life in fresh, original ways. . . . "
- Lisa Ledin
" 'What describes what I can't say?'
the speaker asks in this,
Jessica Cohn's stunning debut poetry collection. . . ."
- Sally Ashton
With thanks to Waxwing and Paola Bruni
With thanks to Tweetspeak Poetry
and Glynn Young
Finding her way forward, Jessica Cohn marks a path with rocks, ribbons, and observations in verse.
In GRATITUDE DIARY, the first poetry collection from this long-time nonfiction author, readers are fitted with "the apparatus of wings" to
re-imagine the "terrible beauty" and powers found in "stranger things."
I am excited
GRATITUDE DIARY
has found its way
into the world.
My entire working life, I have
been writing on assignment;
GRATITUDE DIARY
is the first book
I assigned myself.
Once you start reading the poems in these pages,
you might think you were misled by the title,
because the book addresses how hard the work of living can be.
Each day offers notes of grief, gladness,
and states of being in-between.
At this point, most of my focus is on producing poetry; however, even at my age I am considered an emerging poet, and it's a way of living, not an actual living. To that end, you'll find me writing and editing for educational publishing outlets and clocking in as a part-time reporter for Courthouse News Service. As for interests, they tend to dovetail. I am part of the Community of Writers, based in the Tahoe area, and belong to a number of local writing and study groups. I am a member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Freelancers Union, League of Women Voters, and Academy of Poets, in addition to the Authors Guild. My volunteer work includes helping writers, building healthy communities, and supporting the arts. I spearheaded Poetry Aptos and facilitate a monthly poetry appreciation program at the local library.
Thanks to the following journals, anthologies, and venues and their editors, readers, and producers for giving these poems a way into the world:
AMERICAN GRAVEYARD: Volume 2
"The Test"
BAZAAR WRITERS SALON
"Chickadee"
CALIFORNIA FIRE & WATER: A CLIMATE CRISIS ANTHOLOGY
"How to Read the Summer Sky"
CATAMARAN
"Projection" (Honorable Mention for the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, National League of American Pen Women)
COFFEE-HOUSE POETRY
"Secret Baptism" (Commended for the Troubadour International Poetry Prize)
COMSTOCK REVIEW
"Now Appearing"
CRAB CREEK REVIEW
'"Filmishmish" (Semifinalist for the Crab Creek Poetry Prize)
FERAL: A JOURNAL OF POETRY AND ART
"The Ticket"
FOUR STRING COLLABORATION: SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY
"Storms Offshore"
INDIANAPOLIS REVIEW
"Systematically"
MONTEREY POETRY REVIEW
"The Glimpse"
"When I Finally Wrote a Love Poem It Went LIke This--"
MUDFISH LITERARY JOURNAL
"The Movement of Clouds in Terrestrial Hours"
ODDBALL MAGAZINE
"Harbinger"
PHREN-Z
"Outside, Inside"
"She Leaves"
"Spoon"
"Tell Us about the War, and Love, Miss Dickinson: The Dead Poet's Exclusive Interview with NPR"
"Through Knotted Pine Walls"
"Toast"
POETRY NORTHWEST
"Here, in" (Finalist James Welch Poetry Prize)
PORTER GULCH REVIEW
"To Find Meaning" (Winner Best Poetry Submission)
PUBLIC POETRY: HABITS; THE GOOD, THE BAD, & THE UGLY
"Gratitude Diary"
RATTLE
"Spring"
RED WHEELBARROW
"The Birds" (Semifinalist for the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize)
RIVER HERON REVIEW
"Bodies of Water" (Finalist for River Heron Review Poetry Prize)
SAN DIEGO POETRY ANNUAL
"Animals" (Honorable Mention, Steve Kowit Poetry Prize)
"Cheating on Henry Miller" (Honorable Mention, Steve Kowit Poetry Prize)
"Imprint" (Second Runner-Up, Steve Kowit Poetry Prize)
SCHUYKILL VALLEY JOURNAL
"All the Rooms"
SCRIBBLER
"tl;dr (too long didn't read)"
SLAB
"End of Day"
"We Once"
SLEET MAGAZINE
"Disembodied"
SOUTHERN HUMANITIES REVIEW
"Body" (Finalist for the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize)
SOUTHERN POETRY REVIEW
"Longhand"
SPILLWAY 29
"To a Dear Friend in a Year of Losses"
SPLIT ROCK REVIEW
"Transplants" (Nominated for the Orison Anthology)
STONECOAST REVIEW
"The Fruit"
"NIGHT in Capitola"
SYNKRONICITI
"Broken Skies"
"Languishing"
"Return of Coyote"
TAR RIVER POETRY
"The Fair Condition of the World"
TERRAIN.ORG
"Face Value"
THE JOURNAL OF UNDISCOVERED POETS
"Where Would We Be Without Blue"
THE RAVENSPERCH
"In Turn"
"Report from a Coastal Patio"
VERSEVE: STARS ANTHOLOGY
"Dear James Webb"
WEST TRESTLE REVIEW
"Infinitely Stranger"
WHAT ROUGH BEAST
"Blame the Moon"
WHITE STAGE PUBLISHING: AERATION
"Body Count"
"Evidence"
"What the Months Have Taught"
WHITE STAGE PUBLISHING: GROUNDING EARTH
"Bear Hunt"
"Bearings"
"Next Planet"
WRITTEN HERE AND THERE: THE COMMUNITY OF WRITERS POETRY REVIEW 2021
"Associating with Roadkill"
ZOETIC PRESS: NONBINARY REVIEW
"Preserving Lemons"