Snake in the Parsonage

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:

• New Country
• Anna Reiger at the Blackboard
• Note to Dee
• Snake in the Parsonage
• How They Loved
• Finding the Pearl
• Story of Leave
• The Jewish Bridge
• Cover Me
• Watermelon Pickles
• Country Home
• And more!

For fans of Janzen or poetry in general, reading these will be a rich, rewarding experience.

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).