The Upside-Down Tree: Poems

Janzen, Jean

Windflower Communications

This well-received collection features three poets who differ widely in culture and style, yet are rooted in common values. Yorifumi Yaguchi is a well-known Japanese poet and professor. Jean Janzen is a Fresno, California, poet whose work has appeared in many literary magazines, and David Waltner-Toews is a Canadian with several books to his credit. Why publish a collection of this sort? Poetry as an artistic endeavor has been scarce among Mennonite people through the centuries. This may be because of their conscious separation from the larger world, or their struggle as an immigrant people, or a general suspicion of the arts held by many members of the groups. The three poets in this collection are among the finest in the Mennonite peoplehood worldwide, today. The tension between their lives, their particular cultures, and their yearnings has resulted in poetry rich in imagery and full of conviction. What common themes might a woman from California, a man from eastern Canada, and another from Japan express? Perhaps most basic is an honesty, a bare-bones truthfulness, a disdain for pretense that threads through all the poems. There is also in each a sense of design in which the individual is part of a community -- a family, or a tribe, or a people. The cultivation of that embrace is life; the loss of it is crippling, and sometimes even death. One hears, as well, a wish for peace -- with one's spouse, one's past, with all the "beasts" that beset us, both within and without. These poems reach for justice -- for both children and Grandpas who are victims, for the misunderstood who can't defend their behavior, for those alive only in our memories who can no longer explain their actions.

Three Mennonite Poets

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Good Books

This well-received collection features three poets who differ widely in culture and style, yet are rooted in common values. Yorifumi Yaguchi is a well-known Japanese poet and professor. Jean Janzen is a Fresno, California, poet whose work has appeared in many literary magazines, and David Waltner-Toews is a Canadian with several books to his credit. Why publish a collection of this sort? Poetry as an artistic endeavor has been scarce among Mennonite people through the centuries. This may be because of their conscious separation from the larger world, or their struggle as an immigrant people, or a general suspicion of the arts held by many members of the groups. The three poets in this collection are among the finest in the Mennonite peoplehood worldwide, today. The tension between their lives, their particular cultures, and their yearnings has resulted in poetry rich in imagery and full of conviction. What common themes might a woman from California, a man from eastern Canada, and another from Japan express? Perhaps most basic is an honesty, a bare-bones truthfulness, a disdain for pretense that threads through all the poems. There is also in each a sense of design in which the individual is part of a community -- a family, or a tribe, or a people. The cultivation of that embrace is life; the loss of it is crippling, and sometimes even death. One hears, as well, a wish for peace -- with one's spouse, one's past, with all the "beasts" that beset us, both within and without. These poems reach for justice -- for both children and Grandpas who are victims, for the misunderstood who can't defend their behavior, for those alive only in our memories who can no longer explain their actions.

Snake in the Parsonage includes the poems for which Jean Janzen received The Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts (selected by a panel of major poets). Here Janzen shows us life--colored deeply and in irrepressible light. She finds both ecstasy and incompleteness -- while waiting, at the piano and in the halls of the old people's home, lying in the field, shrieking in the cellar, standing at the blackboard. Poems here include: <ul>
<li>New Country</li>
<li>Anna Reiger at the Blackboard</li>
<li>Note to Dee</li>
<li>Snake in the Parsonage</li>
<li>How They Loved</li>
<li>Finding the Pearl</li>
<li>Story of Leave</li>
<li>The Jewish Bridge</li>
<li>Cover Me</li>
<li>Watermelon Pickles</li>
<li>Country Home</li>
<li>And more!</li>
</ul>
 For fans of Janzen or poetry in general, reading these will be a rich, rewarding experience.

Snake in the Parsonage

Award-winning poet. Jean Janzen demonstrates powerfully why she received The Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Janzen's poems send us to explore the mystery of our connections to this earth, our dust and its dust. These poems show us with certainty what we sense persistently— that we are unequivocally physical and yet undeniably spiritual, so ephemeral and yet so bound. Jean Janzen, a well-known poet from Fresno, California, conducts readings of her poetry around North America and teaches several university classes. "Jean Janzen's poems are lucid, clean, beautifully detailed—but she also knows well how fierce the hungers of body and soul are." —Jeff Gundy, poet

Tasting the Dust: A Book Of Poetry By The Winner Of The Creative Writing Fellowship From The Natio

Once again, Jean Janzen writes mighty poems, finding those heart-stopping human moments for which there is no adequate language. Janzen, a National Endowment for the Arts winner, begins this newest collection of poetry with "Wailing in the Shower" and these arresting stanzas: "After the elation of giving birth, our new daughter fed and sleeping, I stand under the warm water and begin on the high notes-- Madame Butterfly's ecstasy, One fine day in May, the harmony sliding over my body. After the loss of his bride, our friend turns on the guestroom shower and begins his long wailing. It echoes through the house, flows down the stairway, his baritone cries rising and falling. Over and over, the full octaves." And she goes on to mark the full-throated human experience, placing her 42 poems into these sections: "Broken Places," "The Garden," "Carving the Hollow," and, finally, "Piano in the Vineyard." In every poem Janzen is utterly conscious of the unspeakable wonder and terror of being alive. Jean Janzen is a winner of The Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Piano in the Vineyard

History & Criticism

A cold wind, but not a bitter one, blows through the poems in this collection by celebrated poet, Jean Janzen. Here she writes about aging, intimate love, the bearing away of children, light, and as always, memory. A cold wind, but not a bitter one, blows through the poems in Part 1 of Jean Janzen's newest collection. Her refusal to turn aside from any difficulty, any loss, here presses her writing into firmer edges than ever before. She writes with cool tones; she witnesses now with a longer view, layers of life stacked against each other. But the subjects are her choice ones—aging, intimate love, the bearing away of children, light, and always memory. How does she see so keenly above and below the surface at the same time? Motion and rhythms and round words roll through the poems in Part 2, the more familiar hallmarks of Janzen's rumbling universe. She brings longing to every page, and then calls us in, gently, yet irresistibly. Among these 43 new poems are "Skin and Air," "The Uprooting," "Lifting You," "Architecture of Falling," and "Holding On to the Walls." Janzen has received The Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the author of three books of poetry published by Good Books: Snake in the Parsonage, Tasting the Dust, and Piano in the Vineyard.

Paper House

Contemporary

Award-winning and beloved poet, Jean Janzen, has written her memoir. Although she writes here in prose, Janzen's poetic voice is unmistakably present. And so she takes the reader with her into the depth and texture of what she has experienced.

Entering the Wild: Essays On Faith And Writing

Religion & Spirituality

Jean Janzen combines poetry and prose, calling us to reclaim our connections with elemental things, "the original, primal materials of our existence." Delivered as the Menno Simons lectures at Bethel College in 2003, the presentations build on the themes of Mud, Water, Fire, Air and Text, and explore the intersection of nature and mystery. The result is an evocative tapestry of images, textures, words and sounds, woven from elements both historical and contemporary.

Elements of Faithful Writing

Bethel College

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Janzen, Jean. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Janzen, Jean

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Janzen, Jean. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Upside-Down Tree: Poems

Three Mennonite Poets

Three Mennonite Poets

Snake in the Parsonage

Tasting the Dust: A Book Of Poetry By The Winner Of The Creative Writing Fellowship From The Natio

Piano in the Vineyard

Paper House

Entering the Wild: Essays On Faith And Writing

Elements of Faithful Writing