Description: "Continuing the saga initiated with her prior collection Life After Death, Jane Rohrer offers poetry recording her journey from a cloistered upbringing among conservative Mennonites and Church of the Brethren adherents to going "on the road, collecting places," as her title poem "Acquiring Land" describes it"--
Brief description: Born in Broadway, Virginia, as Martha Jane Turner, to a conservative Mennonite farmer and horse breeder and a Church of the Brethren mother, Jane Rohrer met her husband Warren Rohrer when they were 1940s students at Eastern Mennonite College. During the 1950s, as Warren became a painter, they raised two sons in suburban Philadelphia. Jane's 1970s launch into writing poetry catalyzed a late but flourishing literary career. Her 2002 poetry volume Life After Death (Sheep Meadow Press) prompted Theodore Weiss to ask, Original, wonderful combination of simple direct language and subtle surreal turns of mind . . . a full-fledged poet . . . where has she been all this time?
Review Quotes:
"Jane Rohrer came late to poetry, but there is nothing belated about Acquiring Land, her marvelous new collection. These alert, inventive, expansive poems travel widely--into her memory and family history, and around the world--constantly offering up bold, moving insights and turns of phrase.
"Few poets are ready to turn both acquisitive capitalism and generations of Mennonite hunger for farmland on their heads, but Rohrer does just that, in spare but visionary poems that call us to enter a world where we 'recognize ourselves / as we are, everywhere at once.' An intimate, candid conversation between Rohrer and her granddaughter further explores the idea that for the alert writer 'Everything Is a Studio.'" --Jeff Gundy, Author, Abandoned Homeland and Somewhere Near Defiance; Series Editor, DreamSeeker Poetry Series