Three Mennonite Poets

by Jean Janzen

Overview

          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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781680992731
Publisher:	Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date:	12/01/1986
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	120
File size:	609 KB

About the Author

Jean Wiebe Janzen was born in Saskatchewan, was raised in the Midwestern United States, and now lives in Fresno, California. She was selected for The Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for her poetry. She completed her undergraduate studies at Fresno Pacific University and received a Master of Arts at California State University of Fresno. Collections of her poetry previously published by Good Books include Snake in the Parsonage (1995), Tasting the Dust (2000), and Piano in the Vineyard (2004). Her verse also has been collected in Words for the Silence (Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 1984) and The Upside-Down Tree (Henderson Books, 1992). Janzen's poetry has been published in Poetry, Gettysburg Review, Prairie Schooner, Image, Christian Century, Poetry International, ?The Common Reader, The Great River Review, and Cincinnati Poetry Review. Among the poetry anthologies in which her poems appear are Highway 99: ?A Literary Journey Through California's Great Central Valley (Heyday Books), What Will Suffice: ?Contemporary American Poets on the Art of Poetry (Peregrine Smith Books), and Elements of Faithful Writing (Pandora Press).

Read an Excerpt

Separations by Jean Janzen

All day the separate lakes

of our bodies lap their shores

in secrecy, and when we lie

down to sleep they spill

into the river of our dreams

where soul and body meet,

as when we pray, hand

meeting hand, the one

that reached up

against the one that nearly

rooted into the soil

of the lilybed. You can see it

in children's eyes the moment

they first awaken, and the way

their hands go out in a slight

motion toward what was there.

Then they rise and stand

beside us. Our hands touch,

but our lakes, all luminous and blue,

are separate, and the vast

fields lie between us.

A Skater by Yorifumi Yaguchi

Somebody crossed

The city-field in me

By the sharpest edge,

Just now!

Surprised,

I turned my head

Into it quickly

But it's too late,

And only two lines

Were left continuous

Beyond the horizon on

The ice on which nobody

Had ever passed.

Legs by David Waltner-Toews

My legs occasionally tire

of being legs toting

my torso around

like a couple of coolies

like trees deep

in the forest with a slow moan

They want to wiggle

their roots kicking

up a cloud of leafy sheets

They want to build a log cabin

log over log

rooted at the corner

My legs want to live

with your legs

They want to discuss Plato

and his theory of caves

They are tired of being separated

having the wool pulled over them

kept in the prickly dark

They want to discuss roots

They want to discover

where your legs come from

they want to go somewhere

with your legs

to run a race sideways

Later they will stand

next to your legs in the shower

and they will feel good again

about just being legs

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Book One: Poems by Jean Janzen
About Jean Janzen
Book Two: Poems by Yorifumi Yaguchi
About Yorifumi Yaguchi
Book Three: Poems by David Waltner-Toews
About David Waltner-Toews
Editor's Afterword
Index

"Nature and current events are simultaneously addressed in these lines, most of which reckon in quietly sad ways with the virtues of quietness and peace, the simple life, and humans who seek both." -- Christian Century