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.
23 comments:
much enjoyed the intense imagery.. the wildly spinning hands of the clock, the memories, the pain, the swimming through cold starlight into l’ anno nuovo..unrepentant, unredeemed...felt
wishing you a wonderful anno nuovo jenne
I am an eternal optimist, and I wished the poem could have ended with redemption... but still, it is a beautiful poem, and a beautiful voice.
For me, part of what made 2011 memorable would be discovering your poetry, new language and ideas and craftsmanship to enrich my own journey. And for this, I thank you.
May the New Year render to you new wonders to amaze, new friends to embrace, new worlds to discover.
Your opening stanza, the sixth, and especially the last 6 lines contain such beautiful images. Also that wonderful sense of two who are "splinters born onward". Always so lyrical.
I'd love to see how someone might make this into a videopoem or set it to music.
Best to you in the new year, Jenne.
lovely jenne...and a moment of fright at seeing those hands twirling so fast...i feel them at time...love the tender love you speak of...and great imagery...happy new year!
the last two stanzas are just great imagery
Thanks very much-- I promise I'll hitcha back later-- New Years-itis and letdown today, a few traumas in a row. This poem was inspired by listening to Andrea Boccelli croon a song and remembering making love to that album. I guess I'm not dead yet! Love to all and a Happy New Year! xxxj
I'm not surprised you picked out those beautiful lines by Aiken, but your poem - so surprising and delightful (that swimming sailing plummeting snowy egret!), even with its melancholy tones - is all you. You really are amazing. I second Semaphore: poetically, your work has been a high point of my year. All the best to you for 2012.
Those last lines are amazing!
Lovely poem! Happy new year !
There are so many strong images in this piece, yet it evokes the ethereal.
"Something far beyond tenderness
like a feathered cloud caught
in the treetop
comes back..." -
"Moving and moving like the sunrise,
the kiss of the opening rose
over my skin." -
"hands of the clock wildly spinning" -
"two splinters born onwrd in a cascade?"
The sadness of the last stanza, though unwanted, is somewhat expected. I love this poem.
thought i had read this...hope the new year is treating you well jenne...
Was that your moment? I am left longing for happier endings awash in the gorgeous images your words have painted. Wonderful write! Hope you enjoyed a wonderful holiday season, and Happy OpenLinkNight!
Lovely, intense imagery!
Very beautiful imagery. You create such vivid descriptions with your words.
High praise from each of you, whose work I deeply admire! Love at the New Year-- J
I love this, Jenne... such intense feeling of love lost and tender memories. This is but one of my favorites throughout:
I swam on, a snowy egret
plummeting
through cold starlight
Truly gorgeous work, Jenne. I love your use of imagery. Thank you for taking the time to reach out to me. I appreciate it.
Pamela
Wonderful poem (as always). You have such a gift for imagery and pace, moment--epiphanies both for poet and reader. I especially like these lines:
the memory of your mouth
moving and moving like the sunrise,
the kiss of the opening rose
over my skin.
hello again... enjoyed the re-read and this time it was like two splinters born onward
in a cascade.. what caught me most..
Brava bella! Wonderfully wrought Jenne, I didn't know how much I missed your poetry until I started basking in it again!
Oh...this is beautiful! Wonderful imagery 'I swam on, a snowy egret plummeting through cold starlight' ...just gorgeous. I will be a regular visitor from now on. I'm not really sure where I've been....Mars perhaps?? Superb
Beautiful post...and the last lines are my fav "unrepentant and undone" ~
Wishing you Happy New Year ~
Cheers ~
Haunting and beautifully put.
I love this couplet:
the memory of your mouth
moving and moving like the sunrise.
Thanks!
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