Reminiscence and Poetry: A Tribute in Kind to Jenny Kander

JENNY KANDER is known to many as the “poetry lady,” a title she says she adores. She came to Bloomington in 1992 from South Africa to live near her daughter, Tamar Kander, a painter. When she moved here, she promised herself poetry classes—something she’d never had the time for when she worked as a grief counselor. But she did much more. She went to the community radio station WFHB with an idea for a daily dose of poetry, The Linen of Words, and for years Bloomington heard her voice or her guests’ voices twice a day. She also hosted The Poet’s Weave on WFIU from 2006-2009.

The above is from a tribute from last December via WFHB to Jenny Kander, who passed away October 8 this year, a major force in forming today’s Bloomington poetry scene. And so last night, at local coffeehouse/restaurant The Runcible Spoon, many of us who she influenced came together for reminiscence and reading, as well as (as it turned out) to partake of copious food and drink. It was not a Bloomington Writers Guild event itself, although many of us who attended were members including Guild notable (and Indiana “Champion Poet”) Tony Brewer who served as MC.

Beyond that, the ceremony was simple. A dozen or so of us in all, in two “shifts” with an intermission between, shared memories and poems, some by Jenny, some by ourselves, some perhaps simply by association or from books she’d published. In my case I read one from a poetry reading about a quarter century ago, “Dust to Dust,” where I had first met Jenny, followed by “Frankenstein’s Mistress,” one of several she’d included in her A LINEN WEAVE OF BLOOMINGTON POETS in 2002, a compendium of work from some fifty Bloomington poets from both the town and the university.