Jenni Fallein

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" height=120 BGCOLOR="#CCCC99" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="0ec8dfe1esnpes.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>FootHills Publishing 2010</B></FONT><B>     </B><B>|</B><B>     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="FootHills Publishing 2010"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="FootHills Publishing 2010"><U>FootHills Publishing 2010</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id66.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Wheeler Hill Reading 9262010"><U>Wheeler Hill Reading 9-26-2010</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id68.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Anthologies"><U>Anthologies</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id74.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Montana Poets Series"><U>Montana Poets Series</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id41.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Books 2010"><U>Books 2010</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id46.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Upcoming Readings"><U>Upcoming Readings</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id54.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="April 17 Reading"><U>April 17 Reading</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id43.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dennis Formento"><U>Dennis Formento</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id44.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Veronica Noechel"><U>Veronica Noechel</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id45.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Margaret Menges"><U>Margaret Menges</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id47.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Howie Good"><U>Howie Good</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id48.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Susan Deer Cloud"><U>Susan Deer Cloud</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id49.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Donna M. 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The poems seem so thoroughly engaged in their compassion yet so necessarily detached in their irony, even when they're literally looking inside a mother's heart. I don't think anyone could be taught to write poems like these, the way they're profound, funny, informed, raw, elegant, compassionate, sardonic, and/or spiritual-all at once: The afterlife thing hides like a big dust bunny under the bed. Pedometers taunt, tempt and deceive like lovers. Reality TV meets the bedsores and sponge baths of terminal care for dying mothers.   The body stripped of its skin and innards is “all muscle and bone/exquisite.”  The same goes for these poems. They're wonderful.</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> Greg Keeler, author of <I>Trash Fish: A Life</I></div> <bR> <div>      </div> <div> Reading Jenni Fallein is like talking to a friend, a friend who is funny and irreverent, with a fondness for puns, and who has also taken as her calling a vocation of care.  The heart of this book is about caretaking: of people and of plants, i.e. the garden, acts of hospice and hospitality and humility toward the world both global and immediate.  She is not sentimental.  She is not afraid of pain.  Plain-spoken, sarcastic, but capable of exaltation, she celebrates "the crazy chance to walk around in a body" at the same time as she is gutsy enough to title a poem "I Hate Death."</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> Melissa Kwasny, author of <I>Reading Novalis in Montana</I></div> <bR> <div>      </div> <div> From intimate to fractal, <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#1A1A1A" FACE="Garamond" >Jenni</FONT> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#1A1A1A" FACE="Garamond" >Fallein</FONT>'s poems on death, Buddha,</div> <div> relationships, and our relationship to the natural world are moving,</div> <div> impulsive, and hilarious. <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#1A1A1A" FACE="Garamond" >Jenni</FONT> doesn't hesitate to push the</div> <div> boundaries of space-time and reality in her work, and it works well.</div> <div> In one poem, Buddha-fox leads us, Ebenezer Scrooge-like, through the</div> <div> life of a grain of sand. In another the narrator realizes the surgical</div> <div> imagery of her mother's heart might be as close as she will ever come</div> <div> to knowing her. This collection will stay with you. Highly</div> <div> recommended.</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> Benjamin Parzybok, Editor, <I>Gumball Poetry</I></div> <bR> <div>      </div> <div> Fallein<FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond" > destines to lead us into a natural progression of the world, tumbling, bumping, and then spilling over a rim.  What falls away? What's lost?  A world that, in her other light hangs, as in a dream, over an uncertain abyss.   </FONT></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> Sue Schardt, Executive Director of AIR</div> <bR> <div> From the Preface:</div> <bR> <div> Jenni Fallein is on call, has been up all night, is driving to be where you are, and is here in these poems watchful, waiting for the slightest sign that you're here too. You've been here the whole time, and now there is someone who's listening. She's listening to you <I>float up from your body / a paper-doll cloud of yourself / translucent blue… fluorescent green / of a male mallard's neck in sun… through / each of these yellowed plants /desiccated by drought / and neglect…</I> Each luminous or sorrowful act in nature carries a human cry for attention. And when she speaks, <I>gold as any charm, not broken, just badly bent, a grain of sand,</I> she has your voice.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> Craig Czury, Editor, Montana Poets Series</div> <div> Reading, Pa.</div> <div> 9/11/10</div> <bR> <div> From the book:</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Mother On Fire</B></div> <bR> <div> To say</div> <div> that the sun</div> <div> suddenly rising</div> <div> on October larches</div> <div> along the curved highway</div> <div> outside  St. Regis</div> <div> is to blow on the coals</div> <div> of last night's fire</div> <div> all through predawn</div> <div> until the mountain bursts</div> <div> into flame</div> <div> is not poetry</div> <div> Everybody</div> <div> would say the same</div> <div> Fire on the mountain</div> <div> as factual as rain</div> <bR> <div> Remember</div> <div> my mother's</div> <div> dark walnut hair</div> <div> her first attempt at</div> <div> being blonde</div> <div> She emerges</div> <div> from the bathroom</div> <div> forehead blotched in peroxide rash</div> <div> white towel exotic</div> <div> as a Sikh turban</div> <div> until she unveils</div> <div> her bright orange hair</div> <bR> <div> If I would have known</div> <div> these larches then</div> <div> I could have made her</div> <div> feel beautiful</div> <bR> <div> Instead we laughed</div> <div> our heads off</div> <div> at the shock</div> <div>  </div> <bR> <div> <B>If Beauty Were a Spy</B></div> <bR> <div> If Beauty were a spy</div> <div> working for the CIA</div> <div> she would be </div> <div> this Morning Glory</div> <div> pink as five AM  summer</div> <div> making her clandestine entrance</div> <div> into the bed of wayward ragweed</div> <div> and migrant oregano</div> <bR> <div> She wraps herself  in and through</div> <div> each of these yellowed plants</div> <div> desiccated by drought</div> <div> and neglect</div> <div> captures them</div> <div> in her spiraled arms</div> <div> her fingers lock around</div> <div> the hydrangea</div> <div> haphazardly stuck over</div> <div> an old pet's grave</div> <bR> <div> She climbs up the leaning sticks</div> <div> of the rickety gate</div> <div> lifts them all </div> <div> by a network of green tendrils</div> <bR> <div> Unstoppable</div> <div> in her final glory</div> <div> days before the Equinox</div> <div> she infiltrates</div> <div> the bamboo chimes</div> <div> holds </div> <div> even the wind</div> <div> breathless</div> <bR> <div> Jenni Fallein is a writer and painter based in Dillon, Montana. She is a member of the Bentgrass Poetry Troupe, and teaches poetry workshops at the Elkhorn Correctional Facility for women.  She, and her husband, Roger Dunsmore, have hosted poetry circles in their home since they taught together in China in 1997. </div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>If Beauty Were a Spy </B>is a 116 page hand-stitched paper book with spine - $16.00</div> <bR> <div> TO ORDER  ON-LINE                               </div> <div>       </div> <bR> <div> From the US         <form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"> <input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/sc-but-01.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!"> <input type="hidden" name="add" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart"> <input type="hidden" name="business" value="fhp@foothillspublishing.com"> <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="If Beauty Were a Spy "> <input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="10--24"> <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="16.00"> <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> </form>  </div> <bR> <div> From Canada    <form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"> <input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/sc-but-01.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!"> <input type="hidden" name="add" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart"> <input type="hidden" name="business" value="fhp@foothillspublishing.com"> <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="If Beauty Were a Spy "> <input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="10--24"> <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="16.00"> <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> <input type="hidden" name="shipping" value="2.75"> </form>  </div> <bR> <div> From Other Countries            <form target="paypal" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"> <input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/sc-but-01.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!"> <input type="hidden" name="add" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart"> <input type="hidden" name="business" value="fhp@foothillspublishing.com"> <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="If Beauty Were a Spy "> <input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="10--24"> <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="16.00"> <input type="hidden" name="shipping" value="5.00"> <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> </form>  </div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id42.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ordering By Mail"><U>To order through mail click here</U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>