What I Have Offer with Two Hands in Bloomington, MN

Jacob Stratman's first collection of poems, What I Have I Offer with Two Hands, offers poems where the typically mundane and forgettable become windows to the divine. Whether the speaker of these poems is transfixed by Joseph Decker's Basket of Peaches, the hills and creeks of the Ozarks, the Eucharist, his son's Batman toys in the tub, or his own childhood, the focus never leaves his relationship with his sons and their relationship with God and the created world—what he hopes for them and what he hopes for all of us. With a loose connection to the liturgical calendar, readers will follow this father's meandering path through the year as he contemplates how to love, how to hope.