Years after her death, a poet’s life and work speak across the generations, inspiring new music and more intentional living.
Poet and short story writer Jane Tyson Clement (1917–2000) lived in
Manhattan until she was nineteen, but preferred Bay Head, New
Jersey, where the family owned a summer house. Bay Head’s windswept
shore drew her back year after year: “There was something eternal
about it that was always a rock and an anchor for me.” She
graduated from Smith College in 1939, became a teacher, and married
Robert Allen Clement, a Quaker attorney and fellow pacifist.
Despite her privileged background, Clement was disturbed by the
injustices she saw around her and yearned to do something
constructive with her life, to move beyond the “frivolous,
self-centered side of my nature…and to do something – anything –
about the unfair treatment of workers, the hoarding of wealth in
the hands of a few.” Eventually this search led Jane and her family
to join the Bruderhof, a community movement dedicated to practicing
Jesus’ teachings of nonviolence, economic equality, and social
justice. Here Clement taught school, raised seven children, and,
through her poetry and fiction, continued her search for wholeness
and truth.
Evoking comparisons to Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mary Oliver, Jane
Kenyon, and Denise Levertov, Jane Tyson Clement’s poetry is direct
and understated, drawing on familiar images from nature and daily
life. Her story is told through the lens of her poetry in The
Heart’s Necessities: A Life in Poetry. Many additional poems are
collected in No One Can Stem the Tide, and her short stories appear
in The Secret Flower and Other Stories. Veery Huleatt is an editor
at Plough Quarterly and Plough Publishing House.
The poetry is brilliant, and it’s inspired Becca to write stunning
music.--David Crosby
Through hard-won religious commitment, Jane Tyson Clement's poems
rose from feminine eloquence, in the manner of Edna St. Vincent
Millay and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, to something closer to
universal.--Sarah Ruden, author of The Face of Water
A gem of a book... Poetry by an obscure dead poet, but with a
twist: this poet, Jane Tyson Clement, has a huge fan in jazz/indie
rock musician and singer Becca Stevens, and Plough Publishing has
put the two of them together. It's an exciting book on many levels,
especially when you hear the poetry put to music.--Independent
Publisher Magazine
This beautiful homage to Jane Tyson Clement and her poetry, which
will continue to resonate with readers and, through Becca Stevens'
compositions, music lovers, also celebrates the kind of artistic
collaboration that spans time and opens us to our own “heart’s
necessities.”--Booklist
Huleatt’s voice is captivating as she traces the history of a
compassionate life lived. This moving collection on the life of a
true poet is stellar. The final poem in the collection brought me
to tears.--Sheryl Luna, poet, author of Pity the Drowned Horses
The genesis of The Heart's Necessities is a complex and interesting
one. The journeys of being led from one discovery to another are
very profound.--Carolyn Gelland-Frost, poet, author of
Dream-Shuttle
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