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.
19 comments:
Jenne- I really like this... especially the second stanza, I guess I can relate to betrayal... that's sad isn't it? I love the ending.
http://lkkolp.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/who-cares-about-whats-that/
nice set up but from "This is no riddle..." is certainly my fav part of this poem...condensed and direst...
i am not sure what kind of comment you were referring to in the one to me...feel free to email and enlighten me.
Very lovely images ~
Jen I really like this. I love the particular Spanish words you chose that roll off the tongue and glide with the rest of the poem. The imagery is GORGEOUS, and so sad and I felt that emptiness. Beautiful how you put it all together, you quite good at that!
Amy
great imagery here as always jenne..
One wants to turn back
One wants to cross
Both have dreamt
of another country... not an easy place to be, but there are many standing on these lines, and sometimes you forget the land where you were supposed to go in the first place
Very intense imagery, and movement. So many lines I love--
This is no riddle
We gash the earth
We gouge the other
We cloak ourselves in night
We plummet to make a kill
Seems especially vivid.
My only issue, and I suggest this only because you are so good, is I found the conflict between eagles and mare confusing at moments--the wing span and the kicking up in the dust. I may be a very literal reader, but I found the abundance of the animal imagery details a bit distracting as it wasn't totally clear to me--the pair seem to have legs that want to run, but they also seem to be reflected in the eagles and the wing spans and the plummeting (while one doesn't typically think of a mare with wings.)
I think a close reading sorts it out and even a casual reader gets the gist, so much is good here, I think it would be worth perhaps clarifying or even simplifying the metaphors a little bit-- or maybe it's just the legs that want to run, or maybe the idea is that we all contain both eagle and mare (which is also true, and maybe part of what you are getting at.)
I hope you don't mind the specific critique. Your work is always so good that I feel a bit presumptuous to lodge a complaint or suggestion, especially because I may be a simple-minded sort of reader.
K.
Very intense imagery, and movement. So many lines I love--
This is no riddle
We gash the earth
We gouge the other
We cloak ourselves in night
We plummet to make a kill
Seems especially vivid.
My only issue, and I suggest this only because you are so good, is I found the conflict between eagles and mare confusing at moments--the wing span and the kicking up in the dust. I may be a very literal reader, but I found the abundance of the animal imagery details a bit distracting as it wasn't totally clear to me--the pair seem to have legs that want to run, but they also seem to be reflected in the eagles and the wing spans and the plummeting (while one doesn't typically think of a mare with wings.)
I think a close reading sorts it out and even a casual reader gets the gist, so much is good here, I think it would be worth perhaps clarifying or even simplifying the metaphors a little bit-- or maybe it's just the legs that want to run, or maybe the idea is that we all contain both eagle and mare (which is also true, and maybe part of what you are getting at.)
I hope you don't mind the specific critique. Your work is always so good that I feel a bit presumptuous to lodge a complaint or suggestion, especially because I may be a simple-minded sort of reader.
K.
One wants to turn back
One wants to cross
Both have dreamt
of another country
These are words which say so much about relationships. They will stay with me for a long time. Exquisite poetry Jenne.
Thanks all! I so welcome and value your presence here on my blog... heartening! Karin, never worry-- I appreciate your affinity for my work and it's mutual! xxxj
This describes divorce, though also many relationships more generally.
The lyricism in this poem makes it a standout, along with stanzas 3, 9, and 10. There's great hope in that last stanza, that imagination can give us the power to make the crossing and so be who we are, must be, can be.
i love that you used ayorro for a metaphor for the human condition
Your first stanza sets the tone for this very visual poem. The images of eagles and mares kicking up dust jump off the page. I do so admire your work.
Namaste..........cj
Getting in the the eros of place, you pick up ghosts of Paz and Machado in your wings -- a soaring, searing place, healed back in the singer's lysis. Fine job - Brendan
swinging through again on OLN...hope you are well jenne...
I've always loved the bilingual aspect of your poetry. I try it out in a few poems, but in yours it is effortless. Here that bilingualism is perfectly-placed, underlining the different sides of the arroyo. As always, a perfect piece.
I love the rhythm between the earth and the humans in this piece...well done.
Fantastic, Jenne! We have lots of arroyos here in the southwest--they are sometimes places to make love on the spur of the moment while out hiking.
PS - here before. I wanted to say though that I love the title of the book. K.
A wonderful read! "The border of night / The border of honey" is stunning. The poem is full of mouths and flavours, the dry gash mouth of the arroyo and then its swollen, filled state, the honey, the dust, the brine. I always think of your poetry as painting colours and textures richly, and after this one, well, I would like something in the tears and olives vein.
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