Books
Authorized Visitors serves up a banquet of lyrical poetry which explores nature’s relationship to the human experience, where the plates are heaped with awe, exhilaration, humility, and sometimes even humor.
In their response to favorite pieces of art (painting, photograph, illustration or statue), these talented writers have produced their own masterpiece. This is a work you can't read just once. Each poem becomes a new work of art itself and leads you to many questions ripe for personal research. This chapbook comes together like a well-written section poem. Each poet distinguishes herself beautifully--exquisite poetry.
—Jerry Judge, author of Luna Moth and Writing at the Waffle House
Praise for Between the Rows:
Don’t let the spare look of these poems fool you: there is plenty of meat on their bones. Nancy K. Jentsch’s poems are full of wonder and gratitude, brimming with humanity and exquisite detail. Grief and joy dance side by side and, sometimes, together in the same poem. In “Survivors,” the alliteration of words beginning with the letter f creates a fizzle, like letting the air out, leading to a startling revelation. Beloved family members, long gone, are brought to life with memories rich in detail: Mimmie’s Sammeltassen, Pop-Pop’s slide rule, Nana’s mirror. The natural world—geese and voles, vetch and crabgrass—are equally vivid: a spellbound deer with her “whole-note eye,” “doves / flutter like falling leaves,” a stack of hay offers “a whiff of last spring’s / blooms.” Jentsch’s poems compel you to linger. You won’t be sorry if you do. —Yvonne Zipter, author of Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound
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Nancy K. Jentsch’s new book Between the Rows is a beautiful adventure into the spiritual exploration of nature and art. Jentsch masterfully weaves us through the unexpected and the uncertain toward the ringing hope of “every day has something in it.” Between the Rows gives us a clear view of the natural world and all its engaging mysteries. Even at a routine bus stop we hear the “call of geese / angled to scissor sky.” The author surprises us with phrases like “this day slipped from my week’s needle” and “flower beds jeer with weeds.” These poems will amaze and fill the heart as “a cup / that has forgotten / it can hold water.” —Allison Thorpe, author of Reckless Pilgrims
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Reviewed, Spring 2023 in Pegasus.
Intersecting Orbits (Available from Author)
In Intersecting Orbits, the author’s sense of awe is never in question. In fact, the poems in this chapbook often catch her looking up at the sky, be it in wonder or in supplication.
In 2020, with no Smartphone in hand and a grandchild on the way, Nancy K. Jentsch began writing poems to capture what can’t be seen through a camera lens, but is just as worthy of being remembered as photos kept in an album. These snapshot poems, seven-line poems of seven syllables each, document the beginning of her journey with her first grandchild.
Twelve of these poems are included in Intersecting Orbits where they are complemented by related poems that comment on Jentsch’s experience of rural life, a life that knows not only breath-taking sunsets and lush meadows but also rainy days and even the memory of a childhood snakebite.
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