Ornate Persona - Stevens, Jeanine

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Résumé :
Moving dramatically inward from her immense geographic and forensic terrain-Jeanine Stevens investigates Modernist dance, film, painting, collage, masquerade, and psychology in Ornate Persona. She distills her gifts as a lyric anthropologist in this, her most introspective collection thus far. We sense that she's investigating her own psyche, even while handling such themes as a Nijinsky ballet. Her associative dance leads us fluidly from poem to poem, as she empathizes with the gifted, ill-fated Tanaquil Le Clercq, celebrated dancer and muse to George Balanchine: it is the ballet Afternoon of a Faun which unites Nijinsky and Tanaquil across the decades in Stevens' mind. And we become one body with Nijinsky himself, admiring our own sinew. My Egyptian eyes, lacquered hair / body taped / like a character doll. Was it a dream feathering down my neck / or just thoughts, leaf points growing / from the green felt skullcap? Stevens' power to captivate guides us from a Joseph Cornell box to familiar 20th-century masterworks like the film Black Orpheus, then to the mysterious series of mandalas created by Carl Jung's patient, Miss X. Stevens' poetry keeps us reading, thinking, and feeling. -Tom Goff, author Twelve-Tone Row: Music in Words.

Biographie:
A Sacramento poet by way of Indiana, Jeanine Stevens is the author of two poetry books: Inheritor, Future Cycle Press and Sailing on Milkweed (a finalist for the ABZ First Book Prize), published by Cherry Grove Collections. Tiger's Eye Press released her latest chapbook, Needle in the Sea. She has other chapbooks from Poets Corner Press, Indian Heritage Council, Green Fuse Poetic Arts and Rattlesnake Press. Jeanine has won poetry awards from the MacGuffin Poet Hunt, the Stockton Arts Commission, Ekphrasis, The Bay Area Poet's Coalition, Mendocino Coast Writer's Conference, WOMR Cape Cod Community Radio and was one of two finalists for the William Stafford Award. She has four Pushcart Nominations. Her poems have appeared in The Evansville Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Verse Wisconsin, Arsenic Lobster, Perfume River, Clackamas Literary Review, Forge Poetry Journal, Pearl, Cider Press Review, Rosebud, Penumbra, Edge, Centrifugal Eye, Stoneboat and North Dakota Review. Instructor at American River College for thirty two years, she taught courses in Anthropology, Women's Studies and Psychology. Jeanine also edited newsletters for the California Postsecondary Education Commission and the California Department of Transportation. Besides writing, she also enjoys Romanian folk dance and collage. Many of her art pieces have illustrated her poems and chapbooks and have been exhibited at Red Dot Gallery, DaDas Art Gallery and the Sacramento Poetry Center.