Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Poet Jean Janzen to present Goshen College’s S.A. Yoder Lecture Nov. 9

Lecturer: S.A. Yoder lecture, poet Jean Janzen
Date: Nov. 9, 2004
Time: 7 p.m.
Location: Rieth Recital Hall, Goshen College Music Center
Sponsored by: Goshen College English Department
Cost: Free

GOSHEN, Ind. –Mennonite poet, hymn writer and teacher Jean Janzen will read from her latest collection of poetry, “Piano in the Vineyard,” as the guest in the 2004 S.A. Yoder Lecture Series on Nov. 9 at 7 p.m. in Rieth Recital Hall, Goshen College Music Center, followed by a reception.

Janzen will also speak about writing and music during a convocation on Nov. 10 in the Church-Chapel at 10 a.m. Her contribution to hymn writing will be honored with the singing of hymns she has written and the performance of music inspired by her poetry.

In her new collection of poetry, Janzen celebrates the joy of life while she confronts pain and loss. “Beauty and sorrow seem to be one thing,” Janzen said, a discovery she explores fully in the 43 new poems in her book, published by Good Books. Her new collection focuses on what Janzen calls the “wonder of the creation of the earth.”

A major theme of the collection, Janzen said, is “learning to accept ones own losses and brokenness.”

In one section of “Piano in the Vineyard,” Janzen turns her focus to the story of her own family, writing about her Russian-Mennonite father and his siblings. Janzen’s father immigrated to Canada at 13 while his five siblings remained in Russia; it was 20 years before her father heard from his brother, the only sibling still living. “I was willing to go into darker places than I had before,” Janzen said, of these poems.

Born in Saskatchewan and raised in the Midwestern United States, Janzen now resides in Fresno, Calif., and divides her time between teaching poetry writing at Fresno Pacific University and Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia.

Other books in Janzen’s poetry collection include “Worlds for the Silence,” “Three Mennonite Poets,” “The Upside-Down Tree,” “Snake in the Parsonage” and “Tasting the Dust.”

Among the poetry collections in which Janzen’s poems appear are “A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry” (University of Iowa Press), “Highway 99: A Literary Journey Through California’s Great Central Valley” (Heyday Books) and “What Will Suffice: Contemporary American Poets on the Art of Poetry” (Peregrine Smith Books). Her poems have also appeared in numerous magazines and journals including, “Poetry,” “Prairie Schooner” and “Christian Century.”

Janzen’s poetry has drawn praise from other Mennonite writers. “Jean Janzen writes our songs,” said novelist Rudy Wiebe. Poet Jeff Gundy, a 1975 GC graduate who visited the campus last spring to teach the annual poetry workshop, said, “Jean Janzen’s poems are lucid, clean, beautifully detailed—but she also knows well how fierce the hungers of body and spirit are.”

Janzen received a master’s degree from California State University of Fresno where she studied with poets Philip Levine and Peter Everwine. She has received awards for her poetry and in 1995 received the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

In 1999, Janzen was commissioned by Eastern Mennonite University to write the lyrics of a hymn to replace the school’s alma mater. “Christ of the mountain, be our Word” was set to music composed by Shirley Bustos, a 1972 graduate of Goshen College.

The S.A. Yoder Lecture Series honors Dr. Samuel A. Yoder, a professor at Goshen College from 1930 to 1935 and again from 1946 until his death in 1970. During his career, he was a Fulbright lecturer at Anatolia College in Greece, Smith-Mundt lecturer at the University of Hue in Vietnam, visiting professor at Taiwan University in Formosa, welfare officer under the United Nations in Egypt and Goshen College Study-Service Term leader in Jamaica. Gifts to the series by his students and friends have made the endowed lectureship possible.

Previous lecturers have included Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney, Newberry Award Winner Madeleine L’Engle, humorist Garrison Keillor and the late American poet Denise Levertov.

Goshen College, established in 1894, is a four-year residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college’s Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron’s Best Buys in Education, “Colleges of Distinction,” “Making a Difference College Guide” and U.S.News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” edition, which named Goshen a “least debt college.” Visit https://www.goshen.edu/.

- by Melanie Histand

Editors: For more information, contact News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

###