A poem by M.A. Jenene

[An untitled poem by M.A. Jenene. Published in Cross-Current (1922).]

Mary Ann Jenene (1903–?) published, as M.A. Jenene, only a handful of poems in little magazines. Like Emily Dickinson, she left her poems, or at least the ones I have been able to locate, untitled. Like Guillaume Apollinaire, she wrote without punctuation, or at least nearly so. She was known, briefly, as “Rhode Island’s own poet of moods.” What appeared to be a promising start in the world of poetry ended for reasons that remain unknown.

Let us look at the poem again:

A clear articulation in the air
So changed me that l live
Where the proud, wayward squirrel went
Nothing but darkness overhead

Hope that you may understand!

In its abstraction (“A clear articulation in the air”), comedy (“the proud, wayward squirrel”), and colloquialism (“Hope that you may understand!”), the poem seems to anticipate tendencies that would develop decades later in the poetry of the (so-called) New York School. But if Jenene’s poem seems also to carry echoes of William Butler Yeats, well, the room has an echo.

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In search of Mary Ann Jenene : Dreaming in Google AI

[I always turn fiction and poetry into image files for blog purposes. But I want this poem to be read by the machines. Go ahead, AI; it’s all yours. There’s a name for this kind of poem: cento.]