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.
25 comments:
love how you take us all the way from the painting, describing what can be seen to the deeper levels, the hidden and imagines levels, extending and swallowing and brushing with a new pencil...great take on the prompt jenne..
breath-taking, jenne. there is sadness and pain under the beautiful nature scene you paint with your words. This stanza in particular stood out to me: So it is that clouds
love to imitate fire
the river is a scar through time
This is beautiful. I really liked the first stanza, as it drew me right into the poem as well as the painting. And the lines
"The sky flares up like a sonnet
from an angel's mouth in
an onslaught of orange;"
are just so rich in imagery.
This is magnificent, jenne... so vivid and flowing- I love this (and so much more I can't mention w/out just copying the whole piece):
The sky flares up like a sonnet
from an angel’s mouth in
an onslaught of orange
http://lkkolp.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/getting-better-with-time/
I agree with Sheila and Claudia. This is beautiful on so many levels--the physical detail, the metaphor, the weight and gravitas of the metaphor, the relationship between man and fish, man and self, even fish and self! And, of course, with water, flow and time. Just terrific.
I appreciate your comment on mine (my poem) which I haven't had time to look at yet. This has been a very busy/hard week for me, so last step of doing my own poem a bit scattered and rushed, but I am glad to have participated in the prompt. K.
beautiful ...and a beautiful painting too what a talented family, loved it thank you x
I really like this piece. It's every aspect of the painting combined with every meaning of a stroke of the paintbrush. Wonderful poem!
This is incredible. These are my favorite lines:
"he casts himself as the angler"
"in an onslaught of orange"
"and the river is a scar through time"
"Cajoling the matriarch cutthroat
who discerns the ruse"
"she knows the man
as the omnivore come for her"
"he has come again, with his love and need to the wide twilit water"
~Shawna
rosemarymint.wordpress.com
This poem has some undercurrents of its own, a passion between the angler and the poet. I was a bit put off by the poeticisms, but your lovely rhythm and detailed scene depiction along with the subtle psychology make it for them. Enjoyed this.
first i want to gush on your brothers picture...wow that is awesome...what a beautiful day...and you bring such symbolism not only to the pic but the artist behind it...you use the imagery to evoke feeling...the river a scar for instance...nicely done jenne....
Many thanks-- a little feedback is always immensely reassuring. No criticism meant and as for Charles being put off-- do you mean the bio at top of blog? Ignore it...unless it piques your interest. xj
As a painting is built up of several undercoats, colors, so that the finished work is the sum of each transmuted color - so run the undercurrents through this marvelous piece.
This seemed to get deeper in meaning the deeper into the river we got.
Jen - this is crafted with your usual skill. I love how you draw me into the painting, and then expose those layers like we were scraping back the paint itself until we get to a rather shame faced bare canvas. I particularly loved this line:
river is a scar through time
Wonderful painting, wonderful words. With a husband addicted to the sport AND the artistry (I write poems, he ties flies) I enjoyed the moments captured, (but not the fish...I tend to cry when one is actually caught!) Great start to my OpenLinkNight!
i like the metaphors and the way you express the relationships
As always, Jenne, a beautiful ekphrastic poem. Line after line of strong images that mesmerize the way water itself holds a gaze and returns it again and again.
well worth a second read jenne...hope you have a great OLN....
Beautiful write--visual and lovely in every way!
@AudreyHowitt
Lovely words and playing between them, the flow and cadence is like the river itself.
Beautiful work ~
Beautiful write, Jenne.
Pamela
The gorgeous painting sets the scene- then you take us deeper in. Loved it, many lines, especially this stanza: "So it is that clouds/ love to imitate fire/ and the river is a scar through time". Thank you for sharing!
Thanks to everyone-- be patient w/me-- I had to finish up a book review-- whew! I'll be stopping by and perhaps we can have a drink at the pub later! xxxj
A beautiful write!!!!
This is both incredibly beautiful and hauntingly sad. It broke my heart by degrees. The end comes for us all - may it do someone good, and give life somehow. Wonderful write, Jenne.
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