We believe in the intelligence of tulips. The way they open to the light.
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Jane M. Downs
WORK
THE SLEEPING WALL
ADIRONDACK DREAM
PENELOPE WAITING
Red Berry Editions, letterpress
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APRIL ELEGY
WE LET OUR THOUGHTS
FLOAT UP OUT OF US
HELEN
Red Berry Editions, letterpress
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THE WEIGHT OF PINK PEONIES
THE BOOK OF NOW
POETRY FOR THE RISING TIDE
(Anthology)
READING VIRGINIA WOOLF
Jungle Garden Press, letterpress
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IN PROGRESS
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Gallatin, Tennessee, January 11, 1863
Slaughter at Fredericksburg
Colonel Wyman’s right arm shot away
I’ve remained in camp
gaze upon Rosa’s pictograph
late rains have made the river navigable
the dead in scattered loneliness
isolated from the world, the promise of love
River, run north and south
tell me the course we must live
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Nashville, Tennessee, September 13, 1863
’Tis lovely Sabbath day. Church bells sound
heads bowed beside our southern brethren
we beseech thee to hear us Good Lord
rebel women’s faces powdered with cornmeal
sons & husbands in nearby graves
we beseech thee to hear us Good Lord
do our blue coats connote death?
Is forgiveness an empty promise?
we beseech thee to hear us Good Lord
work of crushing rebellion goes on
eight-hundred freed slaves join our lines
we beseech thee to hear us Good Lord
hours sad & sorrow, my heart choked
bless our Maker, pardon our sins
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Nashville, Tennessee, September 13, 1863
Strolled Acklan Place
Mr. Acklan owns
6 large cotton plantations
1100 slaves
850 freed by joining our lines
a Rebel rich & influential
if poor his property likely taken or destroyed
so it goes in this world
the rich protected & buoyed up
made richer by the world
the poor man goes down, kicked still lower,
a millstone around his neck
forever keeping him from rising
to injure the rich
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The Right to Mourn
Civil War Courtship Letters
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Each of the poems in this manuscript is composed of words
and phrases from a specific letter written by my great-grandfather, Everell Fletcher Dutton, to my great-grandmother, Rosina Adelpha Paine during the Civil War. At the time of these letters, he was a major in the Union occupation army in Tennessee. He later became a general, once sharing a tent with Abraham Lincoln. The poems in this collection are based on those leading up to their marriage on December 31, 1863. Titles are the location where he was stationed and the date when he wrote the letter. Although I’ve never translated literature into English from another language, I believe the experience of writing these poems must be similar to what a translator experiences. I had to select words and images in a thoughtful way, always looking for his intention. At times what I chose found its own form. Other times, I imposed form to reinforce meaning or add variety. My collaboration with his words created a third language with which to convey emotion, meaning and love.
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photograph by Luke Lynch
The Slaughter Pen at Stone River National Battlefield, Rutherford County, Tennessee
Everell Fletcher Dutton 1863
Everell Fletcher Dutton 1863
BIO
Photograph by B+
Jane M. Downs grew up in Geneva, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She made her home in in Kensington, California for forty-five years. In October, 2020 she and her husband moved to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. She has a B.A. in English from Syracuse University and a M.A. from Mills College.
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Ms. Downs is an editor and writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. After leaving her position with the University of California Press in 2007, she cofounded with book artist Marie Dern Red Berry Editions (2007-2017), an independent publishing house for letterpress and trade books.
​Ms. Downs’s poetry, fiction, essays and reviews have won prizes and appeared in numerous publications including: After the Eclipse, Alembic, Asheville Poetry Review, Bangalore Review, Borderlands, Cimarron Review, FIELD, Folio, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Healing Muse, Kestrel: A Journal of Literature and Art, Like a Second Mother, Marin Poetry Center Anthology V and VI, The North American Review, Phoebe, Poetry Flash, Ninth Letter, Psychological Perspectives 50 and 51, The Dos Passos Review, Quercus Review, Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine, Rhino, The Reprint, The South Carolina Review, So to Speak, Spillway, Stand Magazine, Star 82, Stickman Review, Review and Westview.
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The Sleeping Wall, a novella, was a finalist in the 2010 Chiasmus Press book contest.
It won first place in the 2012 Fiction Fix novella contest and was published by
Fiction Fix in 2013.
April Elegy received Special Merit recognition from the 2011 Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Contest sponsored by the Comstock Review and was published by Kattywompus Press in 2012.
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She has been the featured poet in Psychological Perspectives and was the subject of a "Cross Tie" profile, West Trestle Review. She was one of seven poets whose work was featured in The Book of Now, Poetry for the Rising Tide published in 2012.
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Her broadsides and chapbooks were letterpress printed at Jungle Garden Press in Fairfax, California. They have been acquired in Special Collections by the John Hay Library at Brown University, the Shields Library at the University of California at Davis, and the Knight Library at the University of Oregon.
It Is Snowing
I am six, sitting on the living room floor
my doll sleeps in the folds of my skirt
cold rushes in when my parents open the front door
and there she is bundled in Mother’s arms
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Mother kneels, places her in my lap
my sister’s little fist grabs my finger
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her tuft of hair, almond-shaped eyes
my plaid skirt circling
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she can’t stay with us
she is going to a different home
away from my dolls and books
away from me
Mother rises, lifts my sister with kid-gloved hands
a covenant of silence made
Father in the doorway in his overcoat
my sister’s vanishing in the sound of the closing door
snow falling around the house into the room, into my lap
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The Blanket
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pink blanket, enfolded child
in the crook of my arm
how carefully I’d arranged my skirt
a fan—red, blue, yellow
Mother’s gloved hands
the tender lifting of the blanketed child
the bassinet gone by morning
no image caught in a mirror
I lined my stuffed animals against the wall
sentinels with beaded eyes, the chorus I turned to
when my parents took her away
their wool coats a barricade against the cold
after they left the day began to forget itself
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To My Sister
the night my daughter was born
I lay awake in the maternity ward
as she slept on my chest
a tree’s shadow moved over the white wall
a car drove by, radio music blaring
a crazy person outside screaming
like a midnight summer cat fight, the shock
of that scream carried your never-heard cry
my daughter stirred against my chest
her heart the same size as yours when I held you
your shadow followed me to this bed, my daughter’s
warm weight, tears that come with milk
before Mother relinquished you
did she clutch you to her chest?
our mother played Bach and Brahms for me
what did she play for you?
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CHRISTMAS EVE 1954
Snow falls on the front lawn, drifts under the streetlight. The Noble fir aglow with colored lights. Tinsel, white-winged angel, a silver bell. Stars against the early dark.
My prayers answered, a black and white puppy curled
in a wicker basket beneath the tree. It cried all night until our housekeeper took it into her bed. They were inseparable until the dog died of old age. My parents buried it behind the house where woodland and yard meet.
I don’t know where my sister is buried.
I didn’t think about it until just now.
Up until the 1980s in the United States it was common to separate children with Down syndrome from their families and society. As a newborn, my sister was placed in an institution near Chicago, Illinois. I was told she died when she was twelve.
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"The Sister" poems first appeared in Psychological Perspectives Vol. 64, Issue 3 / 2021
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POEMS
Painting by Claud Monet
FEATURED ARTIST
Nancy Whitley is a photographer and fiction writer. She says, “This is my quest: to discover the Illusion, the reflection, the bare truth; to see the beauty, the irony, the puzzle. And always, the detail. Photography and writing are both about capturing the detail.”
Night was falling. I entered the room. On the table the bowl. The day's sky held by the sun.
Everyone at the funeral wore black. All around them a storm was gathering. The sky turned indigo. A sliver of sunlight challenged the dark.
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Together they tend the roses. So many years married. The rose's perfume enfolds them.
I kissed your still warm cheek
Held your still warm hand
After they took you away,
I went to the sea
Walked aside the restless tide
Raised my collar against
The wind swept chill
Picked up cold stones
As smooth as your cheek
Nancy Whitley
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Prose by Jane M. Downs