Praise for Public Abstract:

West Branch: “Human Limitations,” Lloyd Wallace, Apr. 2024

“With just this kind of wit, a deep knowledge of formal convention, and an almost supernatural sense of when to break down convention for further gains, Huffman brings us closer to those places knowledge cannot reach. These poems make the inaccessible—all the history that lies outside the body, as well as the inner worlds of ours that fear covers—accessible, and not by simplifying them, but by breaking their forms open, and allowing the reader to peer inside. Sure, Huffman may be yelling ‘representative.’ But the line isn’t dead. I’m listening. And I can’t wait to hear what she’ll say next.”

The Journal: “Time and Knowing in Jane Huffman’s Public Abstract,” Hannah Nahar, Mar. 2024

“As Dana Levin writes in the introduction to this APR/Honickman First Book Prize winner, for Huffman, ‘singing reveals knowing, rather than knowing sparking song.’ Singing reveals something else, too—a touch of the private feeling that is present behind all of Huffman’s public forms and rhetorical satisfactions. While specific confessions appear rarely (though importantly) in the open language in the book, rhymes drive the engines of emotional resonance, as the final haibun confesses with its moving haiku: an admission that is more emotional than rhetorical, though of course it is both:  ‘Rhyme is so public. / Weeping openly / in a crowded latitude.’”  

Tupelo Quarterly: “Fragments on Jane Huffman’s Public Abstract,” Celeste Lipkes, Dec 2023

“This cost is clear in Public Abstract, where we watch the devastation of substance abuse – perhaps more than any other illness process – ripple out beyond an individual into her family and across multiple generations. Huffman’s brother’s substance abuse becomes the poet’s entire identity: “I became the child sister of the child addict.” The familial pattern of addiction is so predictably destructive that Huffman pursues tubal ligation to ensure that she does not have children. In this way the book brilliantly enacts its content: Huffman compulsively repeats poetic forms that she is then able to deviate from, mirroring her desire to interrupt the familial pattern of mothering a son with addiction. Huffman’s interest in the process of revision, too, seems to contain a wish for her brother, who is unable to begin again. What is recovery from addiction but an attempt to revise a life?”

Poetry Magazine: “Public Abstract,” Christopher Spaide, n.d.

“Public Abstract offers musical proof of the heady theory that (as Ben Lerner articulates it) “The poem is always a record of failure,” falling short of whatever “transcendent impulse” inspired it. Huffman is a special case of that general claim: she makes failure her book-length object of study, both in her precise choice of subjects—unacknowledged pain, misdiagnosed illness, addictive temperaments, unbreakable familial patterns—and in her imperfect yet high-functioning forms.”

RHINO Reviews: “Public Abstract,” Donna Vorreyer, n.d.

“Huffman’s prize-winning debut collection is aptly named as it serves as a summary of one person’s internal existence, placed on open view. The term abstract also could refer to the adjective’s definition, as most of the poems here live in their own land of lush repetition and quiet confession, resisting traditional narrative structures to create their own language of tone and mood. This is both a cerebral book about the body and spirit and a sensory book about the power of the intellect.”

Rain Taxi: “Public Abstract,” Erick Varran, n.d.

“Evincing stylistic kinship with Language poets such as Rae Armantrout, Huffman’s instruction, though cold as doctrine, consistently fascinates for its willingness to teeter at the edge of sense; we find her weeping “into the zenith of a rose,” a kiln is said to be “thinking itself warm.” This is impressive, given that the book ultimately concerns the rippling effects of her sibling’s addiction (much like Natalie Diaz’s When My Brother Was an Aztec). In the penultimate section, Huffman’s topical absorption reveals itself to be deceptively extempore.”