Media Kit: Jenne’ R. Andrews, Blackbirds
Dance in the Empire of Love, Finishing Line Press 2013
For Immediate Release: Local Poet Writes “Little Book with a Big Heart”
Contact Info: 970-214-9941, jenneandrews2010@gmail.com
Colorado poet Jenne’
Andrews announces her first collection in thirty years, Blackbirds Dance in the Empire of Love, Finishing Line Press,
Georgetown, KY . The volume Andrews
describes as “a little book with a big heart” contains fifteen free-verse lyric poems rich in the imagery
and iconography of place-- her beloved Rocky Mountain West and in particular, the Cache la Poudre River valley where she has lived for most of her life.
The new collection has its own web site where
sample poems, reviews and commentary are posted. For readings/interviews
contact the poet at jenneandrews2010@gmail.com.
Advance Reviews – Blackbirds Dance in the Empire of Love .
Nationally lauded
poet Jim Moore, Invisible Strings,
Graywolf Press 2011, writes of Andrews’ new collection: “The underlying grace note of
this book is love: love of all kinds, for the present body and the lost past,
for the wandering surprises in a given moment, for the deep certainties and
even deeper questions that both stain and illumine a life in poetry.”
Dawn Potter, A Poet’s Sourcebook: Writings on Poetry,
from the Ancient World to the Present, Autumn House Press 2012, comments, “Jenne Andrews' 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: Mirage, mixed media on Bristol , the Midwestern
artist John Sokol.
Poet Bio
A longtime Fort
Collins resident and self-described “charter Rist Canyon earth-woman,” Andrews spent
seven years in St. Paul, returning in 1978 as an up and coming young poet: in
1974 her first book was published by Robert Bly, she received a fellowship from
the National Endowment for the Arts and was appointed Poet in Residence for the
St. Paul Schools. Between 1978 and 1988,
Andrews earned Bachelors, Master’s and Masters of Fine Arts degrees at CSU and
taught writing at CSU and the University
of Colorado .
She raised sporting
dogs in northern Larimer
County for nearly twenty
years, losing her mobility in a fall from a horse in 2007. Now, anchored to her
desk, she writes poetry, memoir, novels and blogs at La Parola Vivace
and Loquaciously Yours. A highly
engaging interview with Ms. Andrews appears at the web journal Writing Without Paper
in the July 2010 archives.
Excerpt from the Collection:
From the poem Voluble
Dusk:
When the old mares pulled a night wagon
over day’s end, she tucked me in;
she was mother then, and her moon face
came over me and I touched the cheeks
of the moon, and its soft dark curls,
and watched her mouth move with lulling
rhymes; I remember them;
she would bathe
me, scrubbing me on a towel on the bed,
later holding my head in warm tap water
to lather my hair; I would cry, and they
would laugh and scold. Not long after,
the desert dark of madness folded long
wings around her; days and nights
of absence then, before her return without
tears or laughter. Forever afterward,
her face would shine in the crepuscule,
a luminosity that lingered there while
I sat at the piano, tentative girl learning
Schubert and Brahms. She
listened in her
cherry platform rocker and drank;
to forestall our severing from one another
in the voluble dusk, I
played on.
Copyright Jenne’ R. Andrews 2013
Blackbird Amore
They manifest like a sprinkling of ash on the dawn,
congregating motes from a far heaven.
They are annunciations in blue black, shimmering
in the young cattails, the wing’s red badge
that says, I am of the garrison of joy and I have come,
and I am not Icarus and I am not a barn swallow,
nor am I a disconsolate sparrow with her half-hearted
motet, or the barrio crow clacking for scraps,
or the furtive owl sitting high in the oaks
like a jaded bartender.
I sing Verdi, you sing Mozart. I sing today
and you sing tomorrow.
We are the small and temporal things appearing
in the corner of your eye when you flash past,
warbling in our epaulettes, strafing the marsh
to route the hovercraft of the dragonfly,
trumping the laggard lark with our midair
pirouettes-- ballet rouge in the empire of love.
Copyright Jenne’ R. Andrews 2013
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