July 2013
Dear Friends:
My new collection
of poetry, Blackbirds Dance in the Empire
of Love, may now be preordered from Finishing Line Press; just click on the Preorder Forthcoming Titles link of the Press's home page to order or click on the Order Form on the pages tab of this blog. Select all and then right-click your mouse to print out the form.
Before I shamelessly tell you what a
wonderful collection this is, please know that the press run is entirely
dependent on books sold during the next forty-five days. If ten copies are ordered and paid for, there
will be a very small press run.
And let me put the release of this chapbook in context. Many of you know that I had a stellar early career beginning in the Twin Cities
with a first collection, In Pursuit of
the Family, invited and edited by Robert Bly, Minnesota Writers Publishing House, followed
by Reunion, Lynx House Press, Christopher
Howell, editor, and another chapbook, The
Dark Animal of Liberty, poet-editors Jim Grabill and John Bradley. By 1988 I had been Poet in Residence for the
St. Paul Schools, a fellow of the NEA, and earned B.A., M.A. and the MFA from Colorado State University.
I never meant to
drop the ball in re my great start. Yet, Blackbirds
Dance is my first collection in an unbelievable thirty years—years I spent
that were both joyous and productive, as I raised some twenty litters of Golden
Retrievers on our beautiful six acres in Colorado
For the past four
years, thanks in part to becoming housebound and connecting to all of you
online where you have so kindly encouraged me and helped me regain confidence
in my muse and talents, I have been blissfully productive, producing numerous manuscripts of new work, established and maintained two
blogs, written a memoir and two novels.
I am proud to say
that I have caught up to myself and am at the top of my game. Most of the poems in Blackbird have been “vetted” by my very accomplished fellow poets
and it is my hope that this book represents my very best work to date.
Here is what the
illustrious Dawn Potter, Director of The Conference on Poetry and Teaching, The
Frost Place and editor, A Poet’s Sourcebook:
Writings on Poetry, from the Ancient World to the Present,
Autumn House Press, 2012, has to say about the collection:
“Jenne Andrews's
poems are saturated with color and with music. But more importantly, they
overflow with feeling: a deep, unabashed commitment to the knife edge of joy
and heartbreak.
"We are the
small and temporal things appearing / in the corner of your eye when you flash
past," she says. Such lines are a version of suffering; they rail against
invisibility. Yet though she declares, "if I knew who I am, or who I ever
was / or might become, I would be at rest," the reader understands that
Andrews's restlessness is at one with her music. They are interwoven elements
of her work and cannot be separated.”
Cover art is a
gorgeous painting, Mirage, by the unsurpassable
Midwestern painter John Sokol, and an advance review by Jim Moore, Invisible Strings, Graywolf Press 2011,
will be featured on the back cover with Dawn’s thoughts.
Please note: press
run is entirely dependent upon prepublication sales; for there to be a book,
there must be orders to support it and that is the reality for a number of independent
publishers in 2013. Finishing Line chapbooks are award-winning and legendary for their quality; they do not
disappoint!
Please consider buying
several copies and sending them to me for inscription. I’ll return them to you free. E-mail me at jenneandrews2010@gmail.com for my mailing address—and thank
you!
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