Three Mennonite poets : poetry by Jean Janzen, U.S.A., Yorifumi Yaguchi, Japan, David Waltner-Toews, Canada

This well-received collection features three poets who differ widely in culture and style, yet are rooted in common values. Yorifumi Yaguchi is a well-known Japanese poet and professor. Jean Janzen is a Fresno, California, poet whose work has appeared in many literary magazines, and David Waltner-Toews is a Canadian with several books to his credit. Why publish a collection of this sort? Poetry as an artistic endeavor has been scarce among Mennonite people through the centuries. This may be because of their conscious separation from the larger world, or their struggle as an immigrant people, or a general suspicion of the arts held by many members of the groups. The three poets in this collection are among the finest in the Mennonite peoplehood worldwide, today. The tension between their lives, their particular cultures, and their yearnings has resulted in poetry rich in imagery and full of conviction. What common themes might a woman from California, a man from eastern Canada, and another from Japan express? Perhaps most basic is an honesty, a bare-bones truthfulness, a disdain for pretense that threads through all the poems. There is also in each a sense of design in which the individual is part of a community -- a family, or a tribe, or a people. The cultivation of that embrace is life; the loss of it is crippling, and sometimes even death. One hears, as well, a wish for peace -- with one's spouse, one's past, with all the "beasts" that beset us, both within and without. These poems reach for justice -- for both children and Grandpas who are victims, for the misunderstood who can't defend their behavior, for those alive only in our memories who can no longer explain their actions. From the Backcover

Why publish a collection of this sort?

Poetry as an artistic endeavor has been scarce among Mennonite people through the centuries. This may be because of their conscious separation from the larger world, or their struggle as an immigrant people, or a general suspicion of the arts held by many members of the groups.

The three poets in this collection are among the finest in the Mennonite peoplehood worldwide, today. The tension between their lives, their particular cultures, and their yearnings has resulted in poetry rich in imagery and full of conviction.

What common themes might a woman from California, a man from eastern Canada, and another from Japan express? Perhaps most basic is an honesty, a bare-bones truthfulness, a disdain for pretense that threads through all the poems. There is also in each a sense of design in which the individual is part of a community -- a family, or a tribe, or a people. The cultivation of that embrace is life; the loss of it is crippling, and sometimes even death.

One hears, as well, a wish for peace -- with one's spouse, one's past, with all the "beasts" that beset us, both within and without. These poems reach for justice -- for both children and Grandpas who are victims, for the misunderstood who can't defend their behavior, for those alive only in our memories who can no longer explain their actions.

Jean Janzen was born December 5, 1933, in Saskatchewan, Canada, to Henry Peter Wiebe and Anna Schultz Wiebe, the seventh child in a family of eight. Her father was a schoolteacher who became a pastor, for which reason they moved to Minnesota in 1939. Her school years were spent in Minnesota and Kansas.

She graduated from Fresno Pacific College with a BA in English and received her Masters in English-Creative Writing from California State University in Fresno where she studied with poets Peter Everwine, Philip Levine, and C. G. Hanzlicek.

Her first collection of poems, Words for the Silence (Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies), was published in 1984. Her work is included in a forthcoming anthology, Piece Work, Nineteen Fresno Poets (Silver Skates Publishing, Albany, California). She has also been published by various literary and Christian journals, such as Berkeley Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Quarry West, Radix, Yankee, Festival Quarterly, Christianity and Literature, Christian Century, Mennonite Life, and The Christian Leader.

Jean's husband Louis is a pediatrician in private practice. She has two sons, two daughters, three children-in-law, and a grandson. She also teaches piano and is minister of worship at the College Community Mennonite Brethren Church in Clovis, California.
About Yorifumi Yaguchi

Yorifumi Yaguchi was born November 1, 1932 in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from Tohoku Gakuin University with a B.A. in English, from International Christian University with an M.A. in Education, and from Goshen Biblical Seminary with a B.D. in theology.

He spent one year as American Council of Learned Societies Visiting Scholar at the State University of New York, Buffalo, and recently taught a semester at Shenyang, China. Yaguchi is presently professor of American poetry in the literature department of Hokusei Gakuen College.

With his Christian faith as its foundation, Yoguchi writes poetry in both English and Japanese. He has published two collections of English poems, A Shadow and How to Eat Loaches, plus five volumes of Japanese poetry, some of which has been translated. His work has also appeared in poetry magazines in England, Australia, India, and in the U.S.A.

Yaguchi and his wife Mitsuko live in Sapporo, Hokkaido, with sons Yobu and Yujin. Yaguchi is lay pastor of the Shalom Mennonite Church.

About David Waltner-Toews

David Waltner-Toews was born May 29, 1948, in Manitoba, Canada, to Russian-born Mennonite parents. He was educated first as a writer, then as a veterinarian, and most recently as an epidemiologist. Currently David is working as a veterinary epidemiologist in Indonesia, while continuing to write essays, poetry, and fiction.

He has been published in Canadian magazines and journals (he was a regular contributor to Harrowsmith magazine), and anthologized in Canada, the United States, Great Britain, and East Germany. Three collections of his poetry have appeared: That Inescapable Animal (Pinchpenny Press, Goshen (Indiana) College, 1974), The Earth is One Body (Turnstone Press, Winnipeg, 1979), and Good Housekeeping (Turnstone Press, Winnipeg, 1983).

David and his wife, Kathy, have two children. David is a member of the Rockway Mennonite Church, Kitchener, Ontario.