Jackie Bartley, adjunct assistant professor of English at Hope College, has had a book of poetry published by White Eagle Coffee Store Press of Fox River Grove, Ill.
Bartley's book, "The Terrible Boundaries of the
Body," uses imagery from her background in medical
technology and her continuing interest in the sciences. It
was published as the winner of the publisher's Fall 1996
Poetry Chapbook Contest, selected from 130 entries.
Of Bartley's work, contest judge Jill Pelaez
Baumgaertner said, "Hers is the eye of the scientist,
finding life and death in a drop of blood, marveling over
the terrible beauty of illness, confronting all of history
in a chip of rock."
"She knows that we usually allow our senses to
take us only so far and they are capable of so much more,"
she said. "These poems explore the images of this world
which direct our attention beyond themselves to a
transcendent connection, something both more elusive and
more substantial."
"The Terrible Boundaries of the Body" is Bartley's
second chapbook of poetry. Her first, "When Prayer Is Far
from Our Lips," was published in 1994 by the Franciscan
University Press and features 14 poems based on a trip to
Bolivia.
Her poems have appeared in a number of journals,
including "Birmingham Poetry Review," "Roanoke Review,"
"West Branch" and "Yarrow." In 1992, she received a one-
year Creative Artists Grant from the Arts Foundation of
Michigan in partnership with the Michigan Council for Arts
and Cultural Affairs, in support of her work on "When Prayer
Is Far from Our Lips."
Bartley did her undergraduate work at Clarion
University in Pennsylvania, where she received a B.S. degree
in biology and a B.S. in medical technology, and
subsequently worked for 16 years as a medical technologist.
She began her work in poetry with Jack Ridl of the Hope
English faculty, and in 1988 earned a master of fine arts
degree in creative writing from Western Michigan University.
White Eagle Coffee Store Press is a micro
publisher of literary poetry and fiction by emerging
writers. The press also publishes the poetry annual "Fresh
Ground."
Copies of "The Terrible Boundaries of the Body"
are available from the college's Hope-Geneva Bookstore for
$4.