Paper House

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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.

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