Contact me:
To contact Rhoda, please email
the department secretary at baar@hope.edu
Thank you
Website:
website |
BURTON, RHODA, Associate Professor
(2000).
Education: B.A., Fresno Pacific University (1984); M.A., Creative Writing, University of Florida, Gainesville (1989); M.A., UCLA (1997); Ph.D., UCLA (2002).
Interests: Creative Writing (poetry), American Literature 1865-1925.
Selected Works: Mennonite in a Little Black
Dress (2009); Babel's Stair (Word
Press, 2006); Poems in many anthologies and journals, including American
Literary Review, Gettysburg Review, and Yale
Review.
Distinctions: Luckman Fellowship for Innovation and Excellence in Pedagogy (UCLA, 2000); Outstanding Graduate Student Award (UCLA, 2000); Wilson National Foundation Fellowship for the Charlotte Newcomb Award (2000); Chancellor's Fellowship for Academic Distinction (UCLA, 2000); William Butler Yeats National Poetry Competition, First Prize (1999); UC California Poet Laureate Award (1994, 1997).
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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. At first, the worst week of Janzen's life—she
gets into a debilitating car wreck right after her husband leaves
her for a guy he met on the Internet and saddles her with a mortgage
she can't afford—seems to come out of nowhere, but the disaster's
long buildup becomes clearer as she opens herself up. Her 15-year
relationship with Nick had always been punctuated by manic outbursts
and verbally abusive behavior, so recognizing her co-dependent role
in their marriage becomes an important part of Janzen's recovery
(even as she tweaks the 12 steps just a bit). The healing is further
assisted by her decision to move back in with her Mennonite parents,
prompting her to look at her childhood religion with fresh, twinkling
eyes. (She provides an appendix for those unfamiliar with Mennonite
culture, as well as a list of shame-based foods from hot potato salad
to borscht.) Janzen is always ready to gently turn the humor back
on herself, though, and women will immediately warm to the self-deprecating
honesty with which she describes the efforts of friends and family
to help her re-establish her emotional well-being. (Oct.) |
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Babel's Stair (WordTech Communications,
2006).
"A Mennonite childhood, a young adulthood as
a fashion model, an academic career in places as far-flung
as Los Angeles and a small Michigan town: Rhoda Janzen weaves
these autobiographical elements together in poems that are
at once unpredictable in their developments and disciplined
in their formalities. 'Bible Belt,' from which this collection's
title comes, sets an admirably high standard, met time and
again by other poems here. Sensuous even as they are learned,
at home with the vulgar as well as with the elegant, and characterized
by 'a superb boldness / at facing facts' yet surpassing strange
withal, they combine to make a brilliantly various, wickedly
alluring, and surprisingly mature first volume."--Stephen Yenser |
