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Professor Jenne' Rodey Andrews, M.F.A., is a highly regarded American poet, critic and memoirist. Recent work has appeared in former Autumn House Publisher Michael Simms' Vox Populi (over fifteen poems) The Passionate Transitory, Belletrist Coterie, The Adirondack Review and elsewhere.

Andrews' current ms of poetry Beautiful Dust was a finalist for the 2014 Autumn House and she recently withdrew the work from Salmon Ltd, Ireland to protest unmoderated bashing of American writers by Irish writers on the press's social media pages.

Her most recent collection, Blackbirds Dance in the Empire of Love, lauded by Robert Bly and endorsed by poets Jim Moore, Dawn Potter and Patricia Kirkpatrick, appeared from Finishing Line Press 2013. A booklength collection Beautiful Dust was 2014 finalist for the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and solicited by Salmon Press, Ireland. Turning on work set in the West and her native Southwest the collection is under submission to 2019 publication prizes.

Andrews is currently hard at work on two new memoirs: The Shame Garden: A Woman Writes of Isolation, Despair and Self-Redemption, which in intensely wrought and imagistic prose poetry chronicles the anatomy of shame; it is the poet's late-in-life tour d'force, sending the reader through Dante's circles of hell, the sewers of Paris ala Les Mis, mano a mano confrontations with the Alien mater familias, fusing literary and vintage cinematic works in an elliptical dance with human history and experience of being Other. The poet has no idea of what will become of this work but hopes it finds a home as memoir with a small press.

A four part interview with Andrews went live at poet Maureen Doallas's blog Writing without Paper in 2010.

Other collections include the full-length Reunion, Lynx House Press, The Dark Animal of Liberty, Leaping Mountain Press, and In Pursuit of the Family, edited and published by Robert Bly and the Minnesota Writers Publishing House.

Her work has been anthologized in Heartland II, Northern Illinois University Press, 25 Minnesota Vols. I and II, Wingbone: An Anthology of Colorado Poetry, Women Poets of the Twin Cities, Oil and Water and Other Things that Don't Mix, and elsewhere.

Essays have appeared in MPR's Magazine, The Colorado Review, The Twin Falls Times News, and miscellaneous journals.

IIt is Prof. Andrews' belief that one's collection of poetry must be judged on the quality of its craft, voice, and language, not its themes.


With Mr. Bly the memoirist Patricia Hampl wrote a forward to her first collection and is considered the "mother" of the modern American memoir although she arguably shares this title with Mary Karr for Karr's The Liar's Club. Andrews mentored Karr in Minneapolis when the former was circa 19.

Professor Andrews has had an illustrious teaching career at Colorado State University and the University of Colorado where she taught prelaw students in the making of argument and the issues-oriented seminar The American West. She was the highest rated instructor in the University Writing program during her tenure at Boulder.

Currently Professor Andrews writes daily at age 70, having been rendered housebound in 2007 in a fall from a horse, at home with her lover and companion of thirty years the fiction writer Jack Brooks, ten new poems a month, and is working on an additional memoir about her pioneer roots, "Territory Fever: The Story of an Albuquerque Family," posted as chapters are finished to Loquaciously Yours where the poet has produced over 450 essays in the past decade on a variety of topics as well as book reviews. Upcoming: a review of Ethna McKiernan's new Salmon Collection.

Ms. Andrews is also a Civil Rights Advocate advocating in 2019 for the civil rights of the poet Ping Wang who recently won the AWP Award for Memoir.

In 2015, after a long battle, Andrews extracted her MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Colorado State University, begun and finished in the 80's, self-advocating under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In fact Andrews was instrumental in the Colorado Commission on Higher Education's approval of the MFA at CSU.

She is a literary fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Minnesota Arts Board Fellowship, was short-listed for a Bush Foundation Fellowship, and was full-time Poet in Residence for the St. Paul Schools from '74-78.

She lived in St. Paul from 1971-78 during the first wave of the Twin Cities literary renaissance, one of the first poets to inaugurate The Loft Literary Center, co-founding Women Poets of the Twin Cities which as noted boosted the careers of Mary Karr, Ethna McKiernan and others, and spent the summer of 1973 in Reggio Calabria, Italy which gave rise to the "voluptuous prose-poetry" memoir Nightfall in Verona posted in entirety here, designated by arts maven and former friend Caroline Marshall of NPR The Writer Reads as "fabulous."

Circa 2010 Andrews also founded a poetry group on She Writes which included Dawn Potter, Katha Pollock and other noteworthy writers, and supported the work of Meg Waite Clayton, fiction writer in addition to mentoring a number of other up and coming writers.

There is no way to estimate the influence on the lives and work of the some 12,000 students k-12 she met and encouraged in the seventies, but the poet James Tolan has attributed his career to her work as it was anthologized in Heartland II, Lucien Stryk, Editor. Professor Stryk read the title poem of In Pursuit of the Family on NPR.

As noted the poet lives in northern Colorado's Poudre River Valley with her husband, fiction writer Jack Brooks; the couple's daily life is centered around writing and enjoying their beautiful imported Golden Retrievers;-- see the Ardorgold website for details. Contact: jenneandrews2010@gmail.com.

Signed copies of the Blackbirds Dance collection, endorsed by James Moore, Patricia Kirkpatrick and Dawn Potter, are available from the poet. She posts new work below and is available for mentorship and virtual readings via Skype.

She is happy to critique ms. of poetry, fiction and memoir for a small fee.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

New Poem: Of Orpheus and Forms ...









Of Orpheus, and Forms


(It was she… The one so loved, that from a single lyre
more lament came forth than from centuries' sorrows.
So loved that a world took form from that lament
where everything came to be once more:
path and village, forest and valley, field, river, animal.

“  New Poems”—Rilke writing of Orpheus and Eurydice.


Indeed worlds take form from our tears.
Tears shed over that which the heart
Does not wish to see—
The felled bull elk, the hunter triumphant
What is left of the dove
When only her breast is taken.

So are we forced and compelled 
To feed upon the many forms of our making
Irrefutable language,
Famine, the infants pushing death away
With hands small as leaves

The small blue eggs from splintered nests
Cracked open in the loam
The gusts of violation that batter
Our own unfurling innocence—

But I saw tonight a man stop
On the highway
Calling to a small, terrified dog
And later, a film of a woman diver

Gently pulled down
Into deep water by a great whale
That she touched its eyelid
So that it surged up with her

To the surface
as if this great form of being
sensed her need for oxygen

And then love and hope were born
Again within me and in that
Dissipating void between anger
And despair,  I thought Orpheus

You do not sing in vain—I  see you
With my heart, I hear your
Spent and lonely voice.




Posting for DVerse Poetry Pub Open Link Night-- join in-- this is the latest in my series of meditative poems written in response to the postings on the beautiful blog A Year with Rilke.  

copyright Jenne' Andrews 2011

12 comments:

Maureen said...

The voice amid wreckage. Truly a lovely poem, Jenne.

Beachanny said...

A poem I responded to with my heart, Jenne. The depths plunged to swim and touch the genius of a whale, the rescue of the spirit by the sight of a man with a dog tells me that in you and your poetry is the spirit of hope the survivor, and that you and your poetry shall triumph as is meant to happen. Beautiful write my dear.

Ann Grenier said...

Beautiful poetry, Jenne. Your line, "Tears shed over that which the heart does not wish to see.", is very familiar and resonates with me.

colleen said...

Of mythical proportions. I love the appearance of the whale and the resolution!

Mark Kerstetter said...

So beautiful, the tiny things sprinkled throughout: the leftover dove, hands small as leaves, birds' eggs, a shivering dog....

I thought of the Bruce Springsteen song 'Reason to Believe': "at the end of every hard-earned day people find some reason to believe".

robkistner said...

A piece well written, engaging – good work… mine is here: http://www.image-verse.com/clown

flaubert said...

Jenne, so much of this poem resonates with me. Absolutely gorgeous writing. Do you remember when Poets United picked your poem for poem of the week? It was me who selected it. I love your writing. I have been so busy lately. I must make a point to visit more often.

Pamela

Leslie said...

this is so very lovely, and hopeful. and we all need to hope... thank you.

Timoteo said...

Truly poignant, from one who obviously feels deeply.

Did you know that a juvenile male dolphin will attempt to mate with a human female diver--and that they can always tell the women from the men?

Don't know how that relates, but this made me think of it.

Unknown said...

This piece forces the reader to look in the mirror, to face reality and consequence. Well done.

Reflections said...

Love the feel of hope carried throughout your piece. Wonderful imagery.

Thank you also for your constructive crit over at my place. Very enlightening.

Claudia said...

beautiful jenne...i'm a huge Rilke fan and i like how you go from his into your own words. beautiful details with the small blue eggs from splintered nests being my fav...also like the stanza with the man stopping on the highway..intriguing scene and the not singing in vain a perfect closure