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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.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

A New Poem: The Honey-Bearer, posting for Dverse Challenge Today

Some of  you know that I have been working with lines from Rilke, writing with some of the conventions of his style-- meditative questions and statements, lines elaborating upon meanings in a somewhat formal rather than relaxed language-- this has been a very rewarding part of my writing practice;  I use the postings at A Year with Rilke, hosted by Ruth Mowry and Lorenzo Lapislazuli. Join in today's meme at DVerse Poets Pub -- to develop one's own poem based on the work of another poet.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery....he said.  I'll be sending this manuscript around and am looking for beta readers.

Also wanted to mention that this exercise is in certain respects a "palimpsest"-- to superimpose one text over another.  A number of fine writers use that technique now and then, borrowing a structure or certain conventions they see in a given poem.  xxxj




The Honey-Bearer, After Rilke

We stand in your garden year after year.
We are trees for yielding a sweet death.
But fearful, we wither before the harvest.

We Stand in Your Garden Book of Hours III, Rilke

The sweetness of death is abundant here:
See how the pumpkin splits, spills its seeds
And withers up, like a widow lingering
At a bedside

And the weakening bees, gorged
With honey, their last-minute pollination
Of the marigold.

So does the earth propagate herself again
Out of the disintegration of the late flowers
Into the mineral loam.

What then of humanity—
Are we not carried on
In our absence
By our exuberant hymns
And poignant stories,
How I have directed you
To beauty?
Have I not made you dream of birds
With my songs of the blue crane

Love horses when I have said
Look at the corralled stallion
Take his loneliness in
So that he is comforted
By a hand that knows him

And by our children
They whose faces we see at the last
Who bear forward our traits
And multiplied sorrows?

But those of us who are barren
And alone:  how do we ripen.

How does a solitary life
Come to fruition even
As it spends itself
Like a kitchen match flare
Singes the stick.

Death, my mariner
Bearer of honey’s amber stupor,
Your eye on the horizon
Your cloudy hair blowing back

If I yield to you without objection
In the way of other things
Come like shadows to maturity
Everywhere we look

Will you carry me gently
Into eternity’s avidly shimmering
Phosphor:
Will you close my eyes
With your fabled, incalculable tenderness?

For I have lived among the dark birds
Of winter
Long enough to know what you
Have to offer me
And I am tired of being afraid.

October 9 2011



copyright Jenne' R. Andrews 2011

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh so wonderful. This is such a beautiful poem. You have learned a lot from Rilke. It's just wonderful. (I am embarrassed to have made such a paltry offering!)

My one question--are you being purposeful with the punctuation here. I wondered, for example, why "ripen" was not followed by question mark? Is it a given that it is not a question? This is so minor, but I wonder about some other punctuationas well, which seemed inconsistent or lacking. I mention these minor things only because it is such a great great poem.

Anonymous said...

Further to my other comment--I can see that you may simply mean the lines and questions to be very long. So, the punctuation is there. Still, it's something I'd look at carefully, if you, as it really is pretty much a perfect poem.

Victoria said...

Jenne'--thank you for introducing me to the palimpsest--a form that is new to me. I love Rilke's work and you have developed this with an exquisite understanding of his mystique. Thank you for sharing.

SuzyQ said...

The ending stark and reminiscent of Rilkes style.
An incredibly beautiful poem.

I love the idea that our stories and hymns carry us over that great eternal sea :)

Mark Kerstetter said...

Well it's a beautiful poem, period. I've read enough of Rilke to get a similarity in feeling and the faith in art, if nothing else. But I don't know Rilke well enough because I'm not fluent in German. It doesn't matter. Your poem stands on its own.

Timoteo said...

Love it.

As for the age thing, think of it this way: We are younger at this moment than we will ever be again! (Sometimes that cheers me...sometimes it depresses me !!!)

Brian Miller said...

you ask a bard question righ there in the middle...how do we ripen...every thing else wraps around it nicely....the opening visual of the pumpkins life in short is very nice...

Anonymous said...

"But those of us who are barren
And alone: how do we ripen." Incredibly emotional thoughts here.... and from here to the close it was just a building climax of spilling emotion! "I have lived among the dark birds of winter long enough to knoiw what yoiu have to offer me and I am tired of being afraid"////// wow

Jenne' R. Andrews said...

Thanks once more to each of you, each of you superb writers in your own right-- I am late getting around but I shall. I never know how these "Rilke variations" seem to others; your feedback is precious to me. xj

Claudia said...

..Will you carry me gently
Into eternity’s avidly shimmering
Phosphor... wow i like this jenne
you know i love rilke - once tried to imitate his voice but it was a big disaster...the poem never made it to my blog but i'm learning so much from him as i think we do with each poet we read

signed...bkm said...

Very nice...my favorite is the stanza's with the question of being barren...how do we ripen....what a question....thank you so much ...bkm

Brian Miller said...

ha i caught your ref in the comment...i dont know if there is a secret...

1. comments are like an old water pump...you have to prime the pump...give to get

2. there are a good base of people i read every day and have developed a pseudo relationship with that visit every day...relationship, relating is key

3. consistency in posting and reading

so i dont know if you were serious in wanting to know but that is what i have found in the last 3 years of blogging...

i am humbled daily in the responses...

Richarde M. Talbot said...

The imagery lures me into the poem, and I'm rewarded with beautiful, thought-provoking language and ideas. I think you've captures Rilke well.

Kerry O'Connor said...

This is absolutely fabulous writing - but I'm such a fan of your Rilke inspired work.

These lines really touched my heart:

Love horses when I have said
Look at the corralled stallion
Take his loneliness in
So that he is comforted
By a hand that knows him

And by our children
They whose faces we see at the last
Who bear forward our traits
And multiplied sorrows?

Anonymous said...

This poem is incandescently magnificent culminating in:

Will you carry me gently
Into eternity’s avidly shimmering
Phosphor:
Will you close my eyes
With your fabled, incalculable tenderness?

I think your endeavor to publish it will be successful. Thank you for sharing it with us and your kind comment on my blog.

The Noiseless Cuckooclock said...

love it.

Jenne' R. Andrews said...

Thanks so very much, fellow voyagers; may we soar this gorgeous weekend and know we're there together...xxxj

Cassiopeia Rises said...

Wow, how very wonderful and moving this is.Filled with lovely and sad imagery. It moves my heart. Thank you.


Melanie

Unknown said...

Jenne- I'm upset at myself for not seeing this piece up there the other day, but really glad I found it today, as it's a magnificent effort. I was teetering on whether I should do Rilke or a few others, eventually settling, if you want to call it that, on Baudelaire, but I love Rilke and you've captured a great deal of his essence in your piece, not a weak line in its entirety- you did what I couldn't get myself for doing- I really had no idea which direction I wanted to take with Rilke- again so I took the easy way out and went with another poet, albeit one I also love, but it was a pleasure to read this, as it is really what I would've liked mine to sound like, if I had chosen him. Thanks again

Jingle Poetry At Olive Garden said...

love your blog,

come join our poetry picnic week 9 today,
first time participants can share 1 to 3 random poems.

Old poems or poems unrelated to our theme are welcome.

Hope to see you in.

Best!
xoxox