about Jan Lee Ande

Jan Lee Ande earned her PhD in history of consciousness, an interdisciplinary program in the humanities and social sciences, from Union Graduate School in 1996. Her research focuses on the poetics of emergent paradigms--the cultural convergences and individuals who contribute to new systems of meaning.

In addition to an MA in Asian studies, she also holds an MFA in poetry from San Diego State University.

Ande lives in Portland, Oregon, and teaches poetry, poetics, and history of religions at Union Institute & University.

Statement of Poetics

"Why are poets--that is, 'cosmic storytellers' who comprehend science and mysticism and the incarnation of both in the great, neglected realm of everyday life--essential for the survival of ourselves, of our descendants, and of the earth?"

(Martha Heyneman, The Breathing Cathedral)

Poets are storytellers of science and spirit. We tell the story of our souls' journeys through this life, and speak for those whose voices have been silenced. We share our musings and inspired madness, write our own scriptures.

Poetry is ancient, as old as language itself. Our early ancestors gathered around fires. They recited poems that told of the hunt, of the heart's narrow ache for love and communion. In many places in today's world, such poems are spoken every day. Poet Jane Hirshfield says that the poems of Mirabai, the sixteenth-century Indian poet, are the most known and recited of all the world's poetry. Cultures still turn to poems to tell their myths, legends, and lore, to pass down the wisdom of ten thousand flowers and creatures, rocks and trees, the great knowing of the heart with its ecstasies and sorrows.

From a rockface a fossil crawls out to share its history. Mineral words, vegetable words, animal words sprang forth from the great light of the big bang, waiting to be heard. We give voice to the long journey from hydrogen to humans, the seen and unseen hand of God. In the beginning was the word. All that is made manifest, all the stuff of the world, speaks to us with wisdom. There is nothing that is not oracular. In medieval times, monks understood this as reading the book of the world--the planet, laid open and written large, a text for all, given to those who learn to read it. In the middle ages, all things held correspondences. Poets are readers of the book of the world, writers of natural prayer, makers of souls.

-- Jan Lee Ande