ReadMore Review-steve kowit.htm

						Jan Lee Ande
						Jan Lee Ande

					Review by Steve Kowit

						These poems have a charm and poise that come in part from the poet's clarity and humor, but also from the largeness of her spiritual aspirations. There is something of Annie Dillard's delight in the everyday miraculousness of the ordinary world in these poems, and something too of Dillard's reverence and the pleasure she takes in close observation. Among Ande's best poems are paeans to the small creatures of the natural world, poems of genuine tenderness and respect unmarred by sentimentality or emotional slither. This is an accomplished poet who tries to see the world clearly and record it with both accuracy and a sense of the sacred. Ande writes a charming poem about Basho's frog that is in part a naturalist's field notes, in part a hymn to the pleasures of frogdom, and in part a poem of sorrow at that creature's dwindling numbers--one more defenseless victim of human indifference. Her poems about ants, flies and bees are, like almost all her poems, deft and clear. Not the least of their charms is that compassion for her fellow beings that comes from a true humility. But she can write with the same precision and grace--and delight--in praise of feet ("When in ecstasy, the toes arch/ instinctively upward"); and in "Curses for He Who Borrows & Returns Not a Book," she can rail (but with her usual good humor)with a mixture of anger and pleasure: "May the kept book change to a serpent in his hands,/ rise up and bite him squarely on the nose." Although in Ande's poems all things seem on the verge of flight, even in her poems about Buddhism, meditation and divination the poet remains grounded in the natural world, avoiding the pieties that are a danger to anyone who flirts with the mystical and transcendent. "Tantric Sex," for example, is a poem about both sex and the meditative life, while in "Pomegranate," a poem about the death of a small animal killed by a predatory cat, she manages to console herself with the sensuous delights of a pomegranate, lovingly described and all but tasted by the reader: "Splitting one open, you push your thumbs/ through its chambers, fingers bent to scoop/ the cool tart seeds./ We eat mouthful after mouthful, staining our lips/ and tongues blood red." This is excellent poetry: brief, well-crafted narratives that are highly readable while remaining textured and complex, and all of it suffused with humanity and loving-kindness. In a nation that has taken to bombing indigent countries with pathological fury and murdering hundreds of thousands with a sanctimonious shrug of the shoulder, we need more such poets to remind us of an alternate way of consciousness--the blessing of humility, compassion, wonder and tenderness. Steve Kowit is author of In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop (Tilbury House) and The Dumbell Nebula (California Poet's Series, Roundhouse Press). © Jan Lee Ande 2007
		Home About the Poet Selected Poems Prose Reviews Purchase