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Janine DeBaise is a poet, essayist, scholar, and teacher.
Her poetry includes Body Language, a full-length collection of poetry, and Of a Feather, a poetry chapbook. Her essays have been published in numerous journals including the Southwest Review, Prairie Schooner, and Orion Magazine. Her essay The Space Between won the Vinnie Ream Medal, a national contest sponsored by the National League of American Pen Women, DeBaise teaches at State University of New York Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF) in Syracuse, New York. She is the recipient of the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her writing has been published widely, including the journals below. |
About Place Journal • Adelaide Literary Magazine • Baltimore Review • Baybury Review • Bitter Oleander • Blue Violin • California Quarterly • Canary: Journal of the Environmental Crisis • Central New York Environment • The Chariton Review • Comstock Review • Connecticut River Review • Dispatches from the Poetry Wars • The Distillery • Ecologue • Fireweed • Fourth River: A Journal of Nature and Place-based Writing • Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies • Glassworks Magazine • Harvest • Hawaii Pacific Review • Hawk & Handsaw: the Journal of Creative Sustainability • The Helix Literary Magazine • The Hopper • Hybrid Pedagogy • Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment • Kalliope • Litro Magazine • Louisville Review • Mad Poets Review • Madison Review • Main Street Rag Poetry Journal • Manzanita Quarterly Literary Review • Maryland Review • Midwifery Today • Minnesota Review • North American Review • Owen Wister Review • Orion Magazine • Peauxdunque Review • The Pen Woman • Peralta Press • Permafrost Magazine • Phoebe: Journal of feminist scholarship theory and aesthetics • Plants & Poetry Journal • Poetry International • Portland Review • Prairie Schooner • Rappahonnock Review • Red Owl • River Oak Review • Roanoke Review • Rougarou: Journal of Arts and Literature • Seattle Review • Silk Creek Review • Slant: A Journal of Poetry • Soundings East • South Dakota Review • Southern Indiana Review • Southwest Review • Still Point Arts Quarterly • Streetlight Magazine • Talking River Review • Terrain.org • 13th Moon • Under the Gum Tree • Westview • West Wind Review • Wild Thoughts • Women Artists Datebook • Writing on the Edge
A gripping and unflinching hymn to women’s bodies. These sensuous poems speak with authority and grace, providing a timely insight into a woman’s physical and spiritual journey in American culture.
~Sheryl St.Germain, author of The Small Door of Your Death
Body Language transfigures the female coming-of-age narrative (living dolls, narcissistic lovers) into a celebration of the coming of age, replete with breast milk, blood stains, and stretch marks. From the nightmare of “Every Girl’s Dream” to her final idyllic “Vision” (with a lush midway interlude in Paris), DeBaise maps terrains of bodily experience, then bushwhacks beyond convention to genuine intimacy with others and the earth, breaking mirrors en route and making “ornaments” from the “shards.”
~ Laura-Gray Street, author of Pigment and Fume
Janine DeBaise’s powerful Body Language travels from the sarcasm of its first poem, “Every Girl’s Dream”— “When women get in touch with the child inside / they find that child holding a doll / and she’s Barbie”—to the ecstasy of its last poem, “Vision”—“We will worship in the forest / and in the kitchen, with our bodies / and with wildflowers and with each other.” Angry, tender, sexy, prayerful, candid and compassionate, she explores the joys and vicissitudes of the flesh.
~Ann Fisher-Wirth, author of The Bones of Winter Birds
~Sheryl St.Germain, author of The Small Door of Your Death
Body Language transfigures the female coming-of-age narrative (living dolls, narcissistic lovers) into a celebration of the coming of age, replete with breast milk, blood stains, and stretch marks. From the nightmare of “Every Girl’s Dream” to her final idyllic “Vision” (with a lush midway interlude in Paris), DeBaise maps terrains of bodily experience, then bushwhacks beyond convention to genuine intimacy with others and the earth, breaking mirrors en route and making “ornaments” from the “shards.”
~ Laura-Gray Street, author of Pigment and Fume
Janine DeBaise’s powerful Body Language travels from the sarcasm of its first poem, “Every Girl’s Dream”— “When women get in touch with the child inside / they find that child holding a doll / and she’s Barbie”—to the ecstasy of its last poem, “Vision”—“We will worship in the forest / and in the kitchen, with our bodies / and with wildflowers and with each other.” Angry, tender, sexy, prayerful, candid and compassionate, she explores the joys and vicissitudes of the flesh.
~Ann Fisher-Wirth, author of The Bones of Winter Birds
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This book of ecofeminist poetry delves into the once-taboo topics of rape and sexual assault in a lyrical critique of American culture.
Body Language begins with a breastfeeding woman comparing her measurements to those of a life-size Barbie doll. DeBaise questions the sexist practices of her childhood church, and she takes a jab at Disney in her a vision of a body positive world. The book ends with a celebration of the body and an affirmation of the ways that nature, community, and friendship can lead to healing. |
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