Currently in Books

Jars of Rich Preserves
Doug Schulz

In a poet's gift to us, we find meaning for our own thoughts and emotions. Jean Janzen goes deep into her past and into her soul in her latest collection of poems, opening personal memory jars filled with fruits--remembrances of people and places and times--that taste like God was in the preserving of them. This daughter of a poor Mennonite preacher honours her father's faith: " 'It's underwater where you learn to trust God,' he would say. 'You hold your breath and body against its cold blade' " ("Chicago", 1954); and her mother's burning goodness: "You tried to cover us as best you could, in dresses from the finest thrift clothes, bright dresses a flare against the stinginess of the church" ("Cover Me").

Janzen also writes of the divine fire that covered her from birth, and filled her with faith as she grew older "Lips like fire, someone said, and we felt a rope sizzling inside. Our Sunday school teacher said it was the Holy Ghost hovering, beating its wings over us so that every body cell would glow. We pass it on to our children, our voices full of love and warnings" ("Identifying the Fire").

She weaves warm recollections from her rural Mennonite heritage: "Emma Yoder measures each cover carefully, takes her time. The kingdom comes inch by inch. . . . Oh, how these colours praise Him, the colour of God's eye burning among the wheat shocks, His flame licking the stubble until the whole field glows" ("Women of the Cloth").

She exposes sensual fire, too: "Inside each of us lies the secret of our parents . . . we catch a glimpse inside a darkened room where a pair of glassblowers work. . . . They shape a vessel with their breaths, the dance of their bodies, and the firing" ("How They Loved").

Janzen's poems are true to her people, to herself, to her God. That's why just one taste of them can leave something "smoldering in your chest" ("Note to Dee"). When you read her truth, you feel hope for yourself.

Reading Janzen is like opening glass jars of rich preserves--sweet things, mostly, some bittersweet, a few bland (occasionally images lose their preciseness, clouded by conjunctions). When this poetic offering of mixed fruits is finished, you're left with a taste of the wine in Janzen's soul cellar--a full-bottled belief that we have a God who chose for us the greatest gift of all: "Jesus, the wild one . . . fruit, the crushed worlds of sugar and light" ("Photographs Of the Wild").

Life has its serpents and its fruit forbidden to you and me. Go, God gave us poetry.

Doug Schulz is pastor of Cedar Park MB Church, Delta, B.C.

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