Elizabeth Brewster's collection, Jacob's Dream, is the latest in a long career (beginning in the 1940s) of a poet now in her eighties. The collection is informed by an uplifting tenacity. The poems embrace hope and express gratitude in the face of an inevitable future: a not too distant death. In "Dark Cottage" (which is introduced as "Gloss on Edmund Waller's Old Age'") she writes:

And yet the broken walls
sometimes admit gusts of air,
a wind laden with violets
or the scent of clover,
honeyed reminder of delight.
The mind-house stirs with dreams,
opens its door to memories,
or beckons passing spirits,
and through crazed windows, even at night,
lets in new light.

The work is divided in two parts. The first "Solstice and Equinox" is conversational in tone, the reader almost eavesdropping on someone talking to herself. The speaker confides her fears, wonders about matters, asks questions and pragmatically assesses the facts:

What's in it now?
Not Astrophel or Stella at my age.
Love and battle are for the young,
those filled with foolishness and courage.
Friendship, maybe. Gratitude for good weather,
for waking up and finding I'm still alive
with tea and toast and honey for breakfast
on a day without too much grief.

The second part "Amidah: Daily Benedictions" is named after a Jewish series of prayers (dating to the fifth century B.C.E.) which are a private, ritualistic conversation with God. Here Brewster writes numerous blessings: prayers of gratitude, prayers for healing, and prayers for world peace. Prayers naturally speak to the faithful, but I wonder if these prayers can say much to the faithless. Successful poems should, but the cynic might read a nave "three wishes" flavour in the prayers for peace. And while contemplation of the mundane can certainly evoke the Divine, there is something that falls short in the attempted transcendence in lines like "Into what ocean depths / will my soul slide? / Is a water drop lost or found / when it slips into the sea?" or "I bless these blessings: / the daily, yearly miracles, sunrise and sunset,/ sleep and waking, / rainbow and candlelight ."
As a whole, Jacob's Dream is not a forceful work, but it is sometimes moving, sometimes comforting, and sometimes illuminating. Again, from "Dark Cottage":

Weakness is sometimes strength:
the walls of the mind break open
and let the universe in;
a foundation may shift
and a new one be laid.
If the roof blows off,
moon and stars become visible.
Visions seem almost possible .

Almost.