An Honest Answer

Winner of the 12th Annual Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize

"The presiding spirit behind Ginger Andrews' first book An Honest Answer must be William Carlos Williams. When he said he wrote in the speech of Polish mothers, he could have included the American working class anywhere. The sinewy resilience of Andrews' individual poems honors the tradition of his free verse lyrics. She listens for the poetic measure in American speech and reproduces it in unique forms. I would venture to say that the poetry of Ginger Andrews is as close to the tradition of Williams as American free verse has ever been.... As for the voice speaking to us in these poems, it is as fresh as Ray Carver's seemed 25 years ago. Another poet who comes to mind is her fellow Northwesterner Vern Rutsala, himself a descendent of Williams who, like Williams, has kept his eye on the working poor throughout his career. Andrews is a working class, born again Sappho, an Ahkmatova who cleans houses and teaches Sunday school. These figures come to mind not for the sake of hyperbole, but to help understand the originality of this new and remarkable poet."--From the preface by Mark Jarman

Ginger Andrews was born in North Bend, Oregon in 1956. Her poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, Poetry, River Sedge, Fireweed and The American Voice. In 1997, she received the Mary Scheirman Award at the Coos Bay Writers Conference. She cleans houses for a living, and is a janitor and Sunday school teacher at North Bend Church of Christ.

Ginger Andrews won the 1999 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize with her volume, An Honest Answer. She has lived most of her life in Oregon, where she cleans houses for a living with her sisters. She is also a janitor and Sunday School teacher at her church. Her poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, Poetry, River Sedge, The American Voice, and in several recent anthologies, including Good Poems edited by Garrison Keillor. Keillor has also read poems from An Honest Answer eleven times on The Writer's Almanac, and three times from the manuscript, Hurricane Sisters, we're publishing in the spring.