WELCOME! BENVENUTI!

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.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

New Poem: Fantasia, Posting for DVerse OLN and Beyond...

photo internet fair use from lovescylla.com

Fantasia

No one had ever seen such grief and terror;
she fled the shadows of day as if she were leaping
ice floe to ice floe—could they not see
the great owls with extended claws following her,

The colossal winging griffins of shame,
the billowing blue elephants of regret,
the hounds of failure all with their
hot, rancid breath?

And her predatory insomnia—no one had ever seen
such sleeplessness-- someone sitting upright
in the withered gardens the night long,
listening for footfalls on the perimeter.

Have you seen the great and gaping roses,
how they gasp for air like wounds,
the tiny clutching hand of their leaves,
their oozing topaz nectar?

The aberrations of the universe have us
by the throat, waterfalls of starlight and impotence
of all the clock-towers, the port city crumbling
at last, after centuries of its feet webbing
the salt-laved rock;

Despite all petition, the inhabitants of
le bonne village devolving into the deep.

ii

What is to become of the poet?
She loves the soporifics of transport:
out of the body and into the sea light,
the shooting stars over the villas rocking
in their niches in the cliff.
She loves the legend, the music
the tide.

She mercilessly drives herself;
she cooks she sings she paints,
she writes and writes,
she never sleeps.
She is a hardware store candle
infused with citronella, hardy
spending herself, using up
her own rivulets of tallow,
her white flame keening in the dark.

iii

What is to become of the one
she wanted to be; out there
you can see her sailing, outfitted
with a new body.

She left the other behind
in a trade of opium for pounds of flesh.
She shed her decrepitude,
strapped on her new legs, striding
out fathom on fathom.

It is true that madness is a tidal thing
ebbing and flowing and the tinnitus
of the damned on the edge of sleep,
the echo of litanies of mercy,

The flawed sleep that is like falling,
flailing in air veering away
from the rock face,
the cord snapping: oh martyrs
who falls on his sword for her?

Over and over she does this for herself,
sheds grief’s robe like a falcon
his hood, and with her Wagnerian
battle cry, takes to the air.



When and if you have time please check out my review of Cary Waterman's Book of Fire live at Loquaciously Yours...many thanks.  xxj

copyright Jenne' R. Andrews 2012

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

The aberrations of the universe have us by the throat ->

not really the universe, but of society. the psychopaths, the sociopaths, the evil and the good intentioned liberals who give EVERYONE the same rights and liberties, even if they are to take advantage of them in the worst ways, have us by the throat.

many good people believe that fighting is bad, even if it means fighting back, and that weakens the ones who are willing to fight.

thanks for your support on my page.

Audrey Howitt aka Divalounger said...

Just gorgeous writing! I love your imagery and use of metaphor--this piece just sings to me--

@AudreyHowitt

Unknown said...

Brilliant read thank you x

Brian Miller said...

i feel this is a very personal poem...particularly those last two...using up her own tallow...wishing to be in a new body out...i think it is something many of us can relate to ...and so we write...

Timoteo said...

So many lines to love...

I especially like :

...waterfalls of starlight and impotence...

and

...the billowing blue elephants of regret...

Tashtoo said...

Fantastic! (and much gratitude for your good eye at my space!)

Laurie Kolp said...

Jenne- I really like this, especially ii.

http://lkkolp.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/granted-constitutional-rights/

Beachanny said...

Jenne, yours is another unique and personal voice. Each poem seems to expand on the last broadening the landscape of your personal vision, and casting a look into a universe of possibilities, or possible "others" where each of us can wander and wonder. The preciousness and tenuousness of life is always present in your work. It makes me think.

John Richter said...

Definitely a keepr Jenne!

Mystic_Mom said...

So personal and yet so universal, such vivid images and strong feelings rolling along with your lyrical words. Bless you Jenne! xoxo

Manicddaily said...

Hi Jenne, this is a very sad but glorious poem too. There are many many memorable lines--the grasping roses, the predatory insomnia, the citronella poet, the flying other, the new legs, the traded decrepitude, the Wagnerian aria, the swooping owl, the blue elephants of regret--I'm just going through by my memory (which is not great), the teeny hands of leaves and topaz nectar--

Of course, it also adds up to a greater whole, but there are such wonderful building blocks there in your images. K.

Manicddaily said...

Agh, Jenne, I left a comment that did not take. I'm having a great deal of trouble with commenting lately.

A beautiful heartfelt poem--so many memorable images adding up to the whole-- I had made a whole list--blue elephants, regret, citronella candle poet, grasping leaves of rose, Wagner, legs, predatory insomnia==this is just a part of list as now I must rush. Wonderful, hope this takes. K.

Manicddaily said...

Dear Jenne,

I'm having such problems commenting from my home computer that a little worried my comment didn't "take". A lovely poem, with so many great images--I have listed the ones that stuck with me a few times! The blue elephants of regret, the predatory insomnia, the grasping roses, the Wagner aria, the legs, the Citronella poet--terribly sad, of course, but inspiring--the song palpable. k.