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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, May 1, 2012

New Poem: Compline, Posting for DVerse Poets and Beyond....


Compline

Candlelight makes a noose around my neck,
pulling me toward you. We wind down together
like two pocket watches in our chairs,
the lopsided candle flickering.  We are tallow. 
O hour of paraffin, the veering light
with its tiny lyric of smoke. 

I try to pry open the walnut of your silence,
for I know that within you have sailed
around the world.  I want to see
what you saw; whales, off the coast
of Newfoundland.  Christ descended,
in the grotto.  Sweet the night's kiss
of shadow.  We need a blue bowl
of apples here, some kind of
tenderness. 

What a bad idea it was
to exhume anyone asleep
in the graveyard of our history: 
now all the ghosts revive, crows
risen in excoriation,
flying up between us
against the throbbing globe
of a summer half-moon,
gilded ship of uncommon vulnerability
taking in water.

x
copyright Jenne' R. Andrews 2012


19 comments:

Brian Miller said...

ha some really great lines in this jenne....waking sleeping bodies in the graveyard of our history...winding down the stairs like pocket watches...smiles....both great touches in this...

Janine Bollée said...

That is 'parola vivace] alright :-)
loved the walnut metaphor and had to look up excoriation. Very intricate and rich.

Claudia said...

great images throughout but esp. loved...I try to pry open the walnut of your silence,
for I know that within you have sailed
around the world...these lines stick out for me...

Beachanny said...

A blue bowl of apples seems an image of peace, of nobility, symbolizing fecundity and common sense. The language here elevates the commonplace into the august. Beautiful.

mrs mediocrity said...

the veering light
with its tiny lyric of smoke....

i could see that, feel it, hear it. just lovely.

robkistner said...

This is captivatingly beautiful Jenné...

…rob
Image & Verse

Shan said...

Those ghosts are pesky little entities that nag and bite. Great write which tugged adequately at my heart strings.

Alexandra van de kamp said...

I loved your poem with its smart images and poised silences, Jenne. I also enjoyed reading your frank interview about the publishing world these days. You have had quite a literary journey! --Alexandra

Timoteo said...

So many great line here, but "I try to pry open the walnut of your silence..." really grabs me, because I know how tough a nut that sometimes is to crack.

Maude Lynn said...

What an incredible piece! The imagery is so unexpected, and the pacing is flawless.

henry clemmons said...

Some of the best lines I've read of late. The prying open of the walnut is classic. Very skillful.

poemblaze said...

There are some amazing turns of phrase in here. Am going to follow your blog more closely!

Jenne' R. Andrews said...

Thanks so very much! So heartening and the collective work just on this thread-- fabulous! will return favor soon... xxj

Anonymous said...

This is wonderful. Meetings, reunions can be like that - talking of wrong things. I love so many lines but the bowl of apples is perhaps my favorite. K>

Anonymous said...

PS - I mentioned the bowl of apples -- but there are so many great images and lines--the candlelight, the walnut, the christ descending the grotto, the whole disintegration of conversation--k.

Anonymous said...

I love the imagery of this poem.

Anonymous said...

A lyric wonderland, masterfully crafted!

Unknown said...

As always J, a great lyrical piece that spans so much emotional history, and in such finely crafted words. You really do carve ivory, and I think of those amazing miniatures that seem to contain the world.

Jenne' R. Andrews said...

Thanks to each wonderful writer commenting on this piece-- great shots in the arm for me....xj