Bearlodge Writers

PRESS RELEASE - BOOK SIGNING MAY 11

PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Linda Tokarczyk, Devils Tower Natural History Association
307- 467-5283 Ext. 631, Linda_Tokarczyk@partner.nps.gov

Devils Tower Centennial Book Signing May 11

Published by the National Park Service as part of the Centennial celebration, Standing Witness: Devils Tower National Monument, A History is based on superintendents’ notes, monument archives, historical publications, and personal interviews. Researched and written as a commemorative history of America’s first national monument, the 290-page trade paperback includes photographs, an extensive bibliography, and a complete index.

Rogers, a freelance writer from Sundance, Wyoming, was recently invited to contribute to a forthcoming collection of poems to honor Ted Kooser, a former U.S. Poet Laureate. Her work is also included in three collections of women’s writing, several literary chapbooks juried by national award-winning writers, and many regional publications.

For more information about the event, please contact Linda Tokarczyk, Devils Tower Natural History Association, at 307-467-5283 Ext. 631 or Linda_Tokarczyk@partner.nps.gov  or Jeanne Rogers at 307-283-2125 or jrogers@collinscom.net

Publication Credits

Books:

Standing Witness: Devils Tower National Monument, A History; National Park Service, 2008.

Periodicals and Anthologies:

In the Shadow of the Bear Lodge: Writings from the Black Hills, Patricia Frolander, editor; Many Kites Press, 2006
The Sundance Times, Sundance, Wyoming, April 2004
Moorcroft Leader, Moorcroft, Wyoming, April 2004
Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West, Houghton Mifflin, 2004
Seasons of Wyoming, WyoPoets, 2002
Woven on the Wind: Women Write About Friendship in the Sagebrush West, Houghton Mifflin, 2001
Wyoming: Prairies, Peaks and Skies, WyoPoets, 1998
Leaning Into the Wind: Women Write from the Heart of the West, Houghton Mifflin, 1997
Wyoming Journeys, WyoPoets, 1995
If You Would Love Wyoming, WyoPoets, 1993
Legends, ARTCORE, 1993

Excerpt of Writing

Have You Ever Heard a Stained Glass Window?

Listen
to an a cappella choir
their voices breaking along scored lines
some baritone here
alto there
soprano, tenor
the timbre of bass a foundation
of whole notes below a melody
of complementary colors
each singer a solitary pane
a single shaded note
then
edged with lead, they meld
soldered
with a conductor’s hand
light arcing through a vocal prism
an iridescent echo tinting the very air
we hear, the very air a shower
of grace notes, a million tiny orbs
of spectral song
one work of art suspended
by a crystalline chord.

Irises

In her ninety-fourth year
she kneels next to the iris bed
separating ingrown plants from each other.
She hunches over the churned earth,
knows it’s the right time to winnow the bed,
time to give the crowded plants some room.
Dig. Divide. Replant.
She sets flowers on the grass,
their roots twined and entwined,
then moves and sifts the dark soil
now exposed, feeling with her gloved hands
for those bits of bulbs left buried.

Her body knows this kneeling: her gardens flourish,
she prays daily, and long ago she sifted ashes looking for a bone,
a button,
an unburned remnant of cotton cloth that might have survived,
might have escaped that fire, any piece of something
she could lay in a coffin.
Five, three, and one, the babies napped, while her eight-year-old
son helped her hang the laundry, both of them struck numb
when the furnace exploded, flames consumed, ashes darted on the wind.
And she knelt, feeling with her bare hands
for those bits of her heart left buried.

© Jeanne Rogers