Jane Flanders

Who was Jane Flanders?

Jane Flanders was an American poet. She was the author of three books of poetry and three posthumous volumes.

Flanders won the Discovery/The Nation Award, the Juniper Prize, and the Pushcart Prize three times, among many other awards. Her work appeared in The Atlantic, Chelsea, Commonweal, The Massachusetts Review, The Nation, New England Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Poetry, and other periodicals. Her work is widely admired by poets and other literary figures. Joyce Carol Oates said of her first published volume that, "Many of her poems have the bite and sting of Ann Sexton's poetry, but they are admirably restrained as well, tracing the necessary journey one makes in "coming back" to one's deepest self after a busy, extroverted life." Publishers Weekly described her as "a radiant poet," a characterization Karl Kirchwey adopted as the title of an appreciation in which he compares her to Elizabeth Bishop. Ben Howard opened a review in Poetry by saying, "Jane Flanders's gentle poems juxtapose the romantic image and the homely fact, the operatic agony and the mundane tribulation."