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An angel has come into my garden, and I am not afraid.
Jenne' Andrews has variously been an awarding winning poet, published nonfiction writer, breeder of Golden Retrievers, consummate chef, civil rights advocate and interpreter, Spanish/ English.
She was welcomed into an established New Mexico professional family in 1948. Her great-grandfather Bernard S. Rodey founded the University of New Mexico and hunted with Theodore Roosevelt after her grandmother attended Gunston Hall in Washington with Roosevelt's daughter. A colonial descendant Ruth Naomi Jenne' married NM territorial entreprenuer Martin Pierre Stamm; Helen Rodey married Martin's oldest son Raymond Stamm and his brother Roy Stamm inaugurated the Albuquerque Balloon Festival. There is a good pedigree, as delineated in her baby book by her relentlessly elistist mother, on the sire's side as well. The respectable aspects of family history are archived and on permanent display at the Albuquerque museum and the equivocal aspects have pervaded Andrews' creative work.
Ergo, Helen Jenne' Stamm married Stuart Robinson Andrews, a Yalie and colonial descendant, in Albuquerque on the eve of WWII. Jenne' was conceived over a stable in White Bear Lake MN, and subsequently developed a lifelong passion for the Arabian horse. Her brother arrived in 1955. Stuart Codington Andrews will never leave the Arkansas Valley, at least not alive, nor for love or money, where he paints the collegiate peaks, skiis, and guides for the Ark Anglers in Buena Vista. He is to be found at http://www.viewgallery.com .
Her surrogate sister, cousin Holley Hening Junker, died of breast cancer in '07. Ms. Junker was an award-winner quilter whose work hangs in the Smithsonian. Her paternal cousin John Lane is an Episcopal priest in Virginia.
From her earliest days Prof. Andrews has been an inveterate storyteller, poet, and lover of classical music; she is a closet coloratura. Also from her earliest days, she has rescued and restored to health scores of baby animals.
Andrews had a melodramatic and wonderful lovelife, mentioning here two men of note: Canadian poet Tom Wayman, and St. Paul attorney Ramon Esparolini. The rest may be gleaned from the arduous and generous task of reviewing her creative work. Her collections are available from rare book presses.
She moved to St. Paul in 1971 and found herself surrounded by, supported and loved by wonderful writers including fabulous women: Patricia Hampl, Madelon Sprengnether, Kate Green, many others.
She was poet in residence for the St. Paul Schools in the seventies, reappointed for four consecutive years on funding from the NEA. She has read with Robert Bly, who published her first collection, and traveled to Europe with friends Caroline and Julia Marshall in 1973 where she fell in love with a Calabrian and traveled alone by train down the length of Italy for the adventure of a lifetime. She saw Katia Ricarelli debut in Boccanegra at the Arena di Verona during that trip. She has sung in Cosi Fan Tutte and the Brahms, Faure, Rutter and Reinberger requiems.
"Summer's lease hath all too short a date...." WS
In the 80's and into the 90's Andrews taught composition, creative writing and literature at Colorado State University where she earned Master's and Master of Fine Arts degrees in English/Creative Writing, and taught analytical writing and issues-oriented writing about the West for four years at the University of Colorado.
She writes several new poems a week as well as bits of memoir in and around her animal midwifery, passion for "reborn" baby doll artistry, and civil rights advocacy. She is a dyed in the wool inveterate copywriter; see her companion website, http://www.palabrasymas.bravehost.com . As of this posting, July 08, she is recuperating from a fall from a horse with her companion of twenty years writer Douglas M. Brooks, and working on a book of poems, "Caer", Sp. for "To Fall."
...until the curtain falls....
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