When Jane Greer, one of America’s small number of great poets, died suddenly last July, she was right in the middle of a creative burst that had gripped her after twenty years of silence—a burst that resulted in two collections of poems. Now we have a third.

Nearly a Caress is made up of the poems Jane had been gathering for her fourth collection—the third in her late-life creative burst. It may be odd to say that someone died too young when she exceeded her allotted threescore and ten, but these poems make it obvious that the poet was always refining her art, and she would have kept refining it and astonished us with next year’s poems.

Two things set Jane Greer apart from the usual run of current poets.

The first is that she made adroit use of meter and rhyme: she knew not just how they worked, but what they meant. Some critics have compared her to Robert Frost, but to this critic’s ears her meters and rhymes are more interesting, and more surprising, than Frost’s. Would Frost have written a perfect triolet? If he did write a perfect triolet, would his first line be “The triolet is such a bore”?

The second is that she was religious in a way that seems unique in our modern world. She was religious the way King David was religious: she fought with God and sometimes berated him, the way a child fights with a parent, because real children of God can do that. Any hypocrite can praise God; you have to be a real believer to call God a big meanie.

We should add that Jane Greer could be ferociously funny. Her sense of humor may seem gentle sometimes, but that is the lion toying with its prey. When she is gentle, you may be sure that she is about to turn your life upside-down, or at least make you examine your conscience thoroughly.

So here are the last poems by Jane Greer—and yet we cherish the hope that, just possibly, they may not be the last. She left at least two haikus and one original epigram in comments on this site. If she dribbled out poetry wherever she went, how many poems by Jane Greer are waiting to be discovered and collected?

Order Nearly a Caress direct from the publisher, or find it at Amazon.

And for the curious, the original epigram on this site by Jane Greer was in response to this definition from Dr. Boli’s Unabridged Dictionary:

Dark Ages (proper noun).—In Western European history, a time of barbarous ignorance, superstition, and brutality that succeeded the civilized ignorance, superstition, and brutality of the Roman Empire.

Jane’s response:

And ah! for that golden Roman time
that was civilized, brutish, well-lit, sublime.