November Reconsidered
November Reconsidered
“There are adjustments now
To the November rain
To the November expectation
To the November settlement
Schedules and scoldings
Homework and housework
They adjust to me and I adjust to them.”
Part rant, part meditation, part acerbic commentary, November Reconsidered is a gritty and darkly funny collection of November poems that transports us from site to site, back and forth through time. Marc Janssen’s satire takes a lyric yet steely look at a market’s cereal aisle, an eighth grade English class, a Toyota dealership, a California mall on Black Friday, a Happy Hour at Charlie Browns. Although he never flinches from the dark realities of life, Janssen also gives us moments of assuaging respite. On a solitary walk taken to escape the family hubbub of Thanksgiving Day, he notes this: The cold damp air made exhalation look full and white and alive, / White breath in a reverent day.
—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita, author of One Small Sun and Understory
Cirque Press Author — Marc Janssen
It would be easy to say that Marc Janssen lives in a house with a wife who likes him and a cat who loathes him. It is more complicated than that. Marc:
- was born in Ventura, California and grew up in the State of Jefferson
- has a bachelor’s degree in Communication Arts from California Lutheran University
- is a veteran of the Ventura poetry scene
- has worked as a copywriter, a marketer, a salesman, an employee of the state, and was also hopelessly
unemployed - has been published by journals in the US and around the world
- Coordinates the Salem Poetry Project and the Salem Poetry Festival
His wife is fun, smart and beautiful. His kids are brilliant and good looking. The cat—the cat absolutely loathes him.