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.
22 comments:
What a lovely yet sad perspective on watching the years pass by alone ~ lovely poem
Quite taken with "paved years."
Those of us with tire tracks across our backs can appreciate a phrase like that.
Wow the last two lines really brings it home. Like the image of everything parting so it can be seen too.
As always a gorgeous palette, old rose with topaz and holly berries, a tawny port subtly lit half in melancholy silver, half in candle gold.
The play of light and shadow drew me into the scene and I raise a toast to your talent, Jenne.
Re: comment...
I'll bet I would love that too!
I have a feeling I didn't do everything I'm supposed to to link my comment so...if this is redundant, dump it. The play of light and dark created an advent tone for me, the colors are dramatic. I raise a toast to your talent, Jenne.
Yes, Kathy has said it so well,a gorgeous palette, Jenne. You bring us into the room with you. I often sit in the soft glow of evening light, alone with my thoughts. I would love to express them as well as you have done here.
A lovely poem, Jenne. It sings; the cadence and subtle repetition of the image of the glass (with its reflective qualities) allow it to fall beautifully to the ear.
I'm drawn to your concept of twilight in Advent, the contrast that that creates betweem the light fading and the Star ascending, about to shine its brightest; the duality of both sun-setting and being reborn. The religious implications of this go deep.
A sense of sadness is evoked but so, too, is the excitement about what comes next in that life over "the distant hill".
Jenne - I love your words! So well written...brava!
very peaceful picture you paint here jenne.. love the ..glass of twilight...the candle on the old table with handmade things..rest within the moment... felt..
Your images here scintillate in twilit colors, topaz to old rose, bone white to berry red - lying in a pool or lilacblue at the end of the day - each layered with symbolic meanings in the Christmas window of time you have given us. We're all awaiting a new birth. Thank you Jenne.
Lovely write!
So many lovely phrases and images here--the fluency of shadow, holly-berry light, little angel in corner somewhere, parting sibilant grasses, the teardrop moon--I know I'm getting things wrong since doing from memory. Glass of twilight. Spangled starlight.
I love teardrop moon, but since it's advent, wonder whether you might want another star there! (Ha. Probably not. No need to push it, though people kind of like the pushed.)
Shaking out the bolt of solitude. Beautiful. K.
Gee, it's a lot noiser at my place. Rescue truck sirens and fire and police vehicles whipping urgently around the turn at my corner in all seasons.
You made me want to be where YOU are, made me wonder what shape a "teardrop moon" displays, and why one who writes with such a warmth and subtlety must now
lift a topaz glass
Alone at twilight
Lovely words. I lift a glass of starlight...
What a beautiful capture of a single moment in a lifetime of such moments.
Ah, the advent poem ... yYu take the ritual of the collective and transform it into a private chapel here. Without the insides of holiday as richly described here, what else is there? - Brendan
I read much positive energy in this and a sense of peace that I do not often hear from you.
Many thanks, each of you-- Charles-- your poem is wonderful. xj
Beautiful poem. I left a comment yesterday. I just wanted to thank you for your kind comment. Yes, I am on Facebook and we are friends. I did not link this to any other links. I appreciate your kindness. :)
Very well versed... lovely play of words.. perfect.
Shashi
ॐ नमः शिवाय
Om Namah Shivaya
http://shadowdancingwithmind.blogspot.com/2011/12/whispers-buddha-song.html
At Twitter @VerseEveryDay
great piece of poetry.
poetic and fun read.
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