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    Psalms of Life: A Poetry Collection
    Psalms of Life: A Poetry Collection
    Psalms of Life: A Poetry Collection
    Ebook198 pages1 hour

    Psalms of Life: A Poetry Collection

    By Jordan Rex Jensen

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    Life is Real! Life is Earnest! And the Grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, was not spoken of the soul.

    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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    In Psalms of Life, traditionalist poet and autoethnographer, Jordan Rex Jensen unveils his inaugural poetry collection by paying tribute to the pre-twentieth century bards who have influenced his work, the foremost of whom is Longfellow. He also provides a poetic sampling of his own unique pedagogy of personal leadership, soon to be unveiled in the upcoming publication of his doctoral dissertation on the subject. For Jensen, all good poetry ought to accomplish three things. First, it ought to instruct. Second, it should inspire noble actions based on that instruction. Third, it ought to provide to the reader sentient pleasure, both visually and aurally. As a doctoral candidate in education and a scholar of self-leadership, Jensens pen, like Longfellows, is unabashedly didactic and unashamedly rhyming. In Psalms of Life, Jensens poetry hearkens back to the Romantic Period by creatively aping the prosody and platform of an erstwhile era while simultaneously exercising his own original and creative literary flair. The result is a scintillating assemblage of original poetry that is as fresh as it is fundamental.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateOct 3, 2012
    ISBN9781481701839
    Psalms of Life: A Poetry Collection
    Author

    Jordan Rex Jensen

    Jordan Rex Jensen was born in Monticello, Utah, and was raised in Utah, Arizona, and Washington. He has since lived in Georgia, Texas, Alberta (Canada), and Newfoundland (Canada). He currently resides in Houston, Texas with his wife Lina, who is expecting their first child in March 2013. Jordan completed his prep studies at Joel E. Ferris High School in Spokane, Washington in 1998. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in English at Utah Valley University in 2003, and is currently a doctoral candidate for the degree of Doctor of Education at Fielding Graduate University, and is on track to graduate in December 2012. An avid runner, Jordan has completed five marathons.

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      Book preview

      Psalms of Life - Jordan Rex Jensen

      © 2012 by Jordan Rex Jensen. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse 09/28/2012

      ISBN: 978-1-4772-7371-5 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4817-0183-9 (ebook)

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Contents

      Part One      Whence Cometh The Psalms?

      Chapter One      What is Autoethnography?

      Chapter Two      A Poetic Autoethnography

      Chapter Three      Mentoring Psalmists

      Part Two      The Psalms

      Chapter Four      Early Attempts

      Chapter Five      Psalms of Life

      Chapter Six      Psalms of Romance & Love

      Section One      Pre-Conjugal Psalms of Romance

      The Sonnets

      Other Romantic Poems

      Section Two      Psalms of Lina

      Chapter Seven      Psalms of Self-Leadership

      About the Author

      Endnotes

      In Memory of

      Image22190.PNG

      Henry Wadworth Longfellow

      1807-1882

      Dedication

      37555.jpg

      To my Dad, Rex Buckley Jensen.

      Image22196.PNG

      Dad, about my age, in the 1970s

      A veritable renaissance man, my father was, nonetheless, primarily a career English teacher at the middle and high school levels. His passion for poetry and great literature fueled my own love of verse and prose, and his personal library provided the fodder for my literary love affair to flourish. Thank you Dad! I admire you in so many different ways, and am proud to bear your name betwixt my own.

      37558.jpg

      —All my love,

      Jordan Rex.

      Image22202.PNG

      With Dad at my college graduation in May 2003.

      We were both English majors.

      Part One

      Whence Cometh The Psalms?

      Chapter One

      What is Autoethnography?

      37525.jpg

      Autoethnography involves the qualitative research of one’s own person and past. Drawn from the social science of ethnography and anthropology, this unique, and burgeoning research method affords individuals an opportunity to academically analyze their own lives as an anthropologist might study a culture, or an ethnographer might study a group of people residing within a culture. It goes beyond mere journaling to permit the scholarly analysis of one’s own self and self-history.

      An avid journaler and self-leadership scholar, autoethnography comes naturally to me. This proclivity was likely implanted in me, in part, genetically. It was certainly fueled mimetically by the example of many of my forbearers. This was especially true in the case of my father. A voluminous diarist, Dad granted me free access at an early age to peruse his daily journals at my leisure. To my great benefit, I took advantage of his offer, and have followed in his footsteps by penning my own.

      Currently, I am nearing the completion of my doctoral dissertation, a self-leadership study that autoethnographically chronicles the past quarter century of my life. Poetry has been a big part of my life during this same time period. Aside from serving as the inaugural publication of my first poetry collection, this volume also serves as a poetic autoethnography of my life’s journey, as well as a literary exponent to promote the use of poetry and verse as a pedagogical tool in classrooms of all levels.

      Readers of my poetry will discover many autobiographical and autoethnographic elements thereto. One prominent theme involves my difficulties learning to manage obsessive-compulsive disorder, existential anxiety, and depression, which have been a regular part of my life since age 12. Other salient themes include romance and self-leadership, two components of life I have at various times been, for good or ill, obsessed with.

      Chapter Two

      A Poetic Autoethnography

      37528.jpg

      As a young boy, one of my cherished pastimes was perusing the books in my maternal grandmother’s library, and on the shelves of my father’s home office. My maternal grandfather, a professor of speech and drama by trade, had compiled a library of literally thousands of books throughout his life. Although he died in 1964 (fifteen years prior to my birth in 1979), a sizable remnant of his impressive collection remained in my Grandmother’s home until her passing in 1992. As a young lad, I spent many hours in her home library, and continually borrowed books there from to take home and read. After her death, I annexed a few dozen or so of my favorites, some of which remain on my shelves to this day. A similar story played out with my Dad’s smaller, but well-endowed home library.

      My father is very much a Renaissance Man. A land owner/developer and certified general contractor since before I was born, he was responsible for the construction and/or the oversight of 57 homes, including the one where I lived the first seven years of my life. He is also a professional photographer who has sold his work for pay. For over two decades, he was the owner and/or operator of a local apartment complex with dozens of units. Currently retired, he writes a weekly column and other news articles for his home county’s weekly paper, The San Juan Record. His journalistic endeavors are a mere side project while he, a 69-year-old man, busies himself further with personally constructing his dream home (his 58th) on his cherished land. With my step-mom, he also runs a variety store, also on his beloved acres along Highway 191, just south of their home in Monticello, Utah, the unofficial capital of God’s Country. From home landscaping to selling trampolines, from building shelves in client’s garages to teaching professional seminars, it seems there is little my Dad couldn’t do—or hasn’t done—in one sense or another throughout his life. I’ve personally known few individuals more ambitious than my Dad, and I’m grateful for the work ethic he instilled in me while just a boy, through both his example, and the many opportunities he gave me to work hard myself.

      While he dabbled—and sometimes immersed himself—in many different avocations over the course of his career, my father was first and foremost a middle and high school English teacher, and his bookshelves laid bare his passion for great literature—a love he passed on to me at a tender age. For example, on Christmas day in 1989, I unwrapped an especially memorable gift from my Dad. It was a 2,300-page single-volume copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare. I was only 10 years old! In the front cover, he inscribed a beautifully hand-written (cursive) note to me that read:

      To my precious Jordan in hopes that this will be the beginning of a quality library for a quality" mind. I love and admire you so much. I hope you will discover as I have, that some of life’s best experiences can be found in great books. Mr. Shakespeare will mean more to you as you grow older, and age gives you the wisdom to appreciate the great truths contained herein.

      Love,

      Dad

      Dec 25, 1989

      Mesa, Arizona."

      While my personal library had already begun to grow at this point in my life, this volume served as a key foundation stone in a collection that would expand to over 500 volumes by the time I had graduated from college. It remains a cherished cornerstone of my library today. To date, I continue to eye books in my Dad’s personal library. On a recent trip to visit him and my step-mom in their home in Monticello, I persuaded him to let me borrow a 100-year old collection of Longfellow’s work published in England in 1912; a real beauty! He had purchased this volume in the mid 1960s as a Mormon Missionary in England. Now, this precious collection rests on my own shelf, a prized, on-loan accoutrement I deeply appreciate and hope to someday own after my beloved Papa passes through to the next world where he may beat me in his chance to meet Henry himself. On this same recent trip, I eyed, and confess to coveting another, similar volume of Wordsworth’s work with a publication date from the late 1800s. Perhaps next time I’ll extend my familial capital a bit further and ask to borrow that little gem as well.

      A voracious reader and talented writer, I know of few conversationalists more enthusiastic and engaging than my Dad. Some of our best talks have occurred on road trips. Twice I have accompanied him on cross-continental automobile jaunts (1991 and 2003). On the more recent, we took to studying vocabulary words together, and even collaborated on a poem that is included in this collection.

      I’ll never forget the day my Dad read to me aloud The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes. I was in elementary school at the time, and had just come home from school. Dad was sitting

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