Louis Jenkins

Louis Burke Jenkins (October 28, 1942 – December 21, 2019) was an American prose poet. He lived in Duluth, Minnesota, with his wife Ann for over four decades, beginning in 1971. He also lived in Bloomington, Minnesota. His poems have been published in a number of literary magazines and anthologies. Jenkins was a guest on A Prairie Home Companion numerous times and was also featured on The Writer's Almanacand on the Northern Lights TV Series.

Louis Burke Jenkins was born October 28, 1942 in Enid, Oklahoma to Burke Jenkins and Genevieve (née Webring). He attended Wichita State University from 1967 to 1969. Jenkins married Sandra Brashear in 1963, divorcing in 1968, and then married librarian Ann Jacobson in 1970, relocating to Minnesota in 1971. He has a son named Lars.

Jenkins died at his home in Bloomington on December 21, 2019, at age 77.

Louis Jenkins’ book, Nice Fish, was winner of the Minnesota Book Award in 1995, and his book Just Above Water won the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award in 1997. Jenkins was a featured poet at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in 1996 and at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in England in 2007. He was a Bush Foundation Fellow in 1979 and 1984.

Actor Mark Rylance recited works by Jenkins in lieu of formal acceptance speeches after winning a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for the play Boeing-Boeing in 2008 and after winning his Tony Award for the play Jerusalem in 2011. Rylance then transformed Jenkins’ poetry into the play Nice Fish, and Jenkins played Old Man Winter in a production of that play at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2016. Jenkins also appeared in the minor role of Earl in the 2016 film Blood Stripe and as a therapist in the 1964 film Lilith.

Books

• Where Your House Is Now: New and Selected Prose Poems (Nodin Press, 2019)
• In the Sun Out of the Wind (Will o' the Wisp Books, 2017)
• Before You Know It: Prose Poems 1970-2005 (Will o' the Wisp Books, 2009)
• European Shoes (Will o' the Wisp Books, 2008)
• North of the Cities (Will o' the Wisp Books, 2007)
• Four Places on Lake Superior’s North Shore (Red Dragonfly Press, 2005)
• Distance From the Sun (Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, 2004)
• Sea Smoke (Holy Cow! Press, 2004)
• The Winter Road (Holy Cow! Press, 2000)
• Just Above Water (Holy Cow! Press, 1997)
• Nice Fish: New and Selected Prose Poems (Holy Cow! Press, 1995)
• All Tangled Up With the Living (Nineties Press, 1991)
• An Almost Human Gesture (Eighties Press and Ally Press, 1987)
• The Water's Easy Reach:Prose Poems (White Pine Press, 1985)
• The Well Digger's Wife (Minnesota Writer's Publishing House Booklet No. 2, 1973)
• Will Small: The Journey (White Pine Press, 1987)

Anthologies

• Good Poems for Hard Times Garrison Keillor, ed. (Viking, 2005)
• Great American Prose Poems David Lehman, ed. (Scribner, 2003)
• Poetry 180 Billy Collins, ed. (Random House, 2003)
• No Boundaries: Prose Poems by 24 American Prose Poets (Tupelo Press, 2003)
• Are You Experienced? (University of Iowa Press, 2003)
• Stories From Where We Live (Milkweed Editions, 2003)
• Good Poems Garrison Keillor, ed. (Viking, 2002)
• The Thousands, Number One (Thousands Press, 2001)
• The Best of the Prose Poem (Providence College, Providence, RI, 2000)
• The Best American Poetry 1999 David Lehman, ed. (Scribner, 1999)
• Literature and Its Writers (Bedford Books, Boston, 1997)
• The Plain Truth of Things (Harper Collins, 1997)
• The Party Train: A Collection North American Prose Poetry(New Rivers Press, 1996)
• Literature: The Evolving Canon Sven Birkerts, ed. (Allyn and Bacon, 1993)
• Men of Our Time (University of Georgia Press, 1992)
• The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart Bly, Hillman and Meade, eds.(Harper Collins, 1992)
• Reading Rooms (Doubleday,1991)
• The Best of Crazyhorse (University of Arkansas Press, 1990)
• Minnesota Writes: Poetry (Milkweed Books, 1987)
• News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness Robert Bly, ed. (Sierra Club Books, 1980)
• Heartland II: Poets of the Midwest (Northern Illinois University Press, 1975)

Audio recordings

• Any Way in the World (Thousands Press, 2000)

Plays

• Nice Fish (with Mark Rylance, 2013, Guthrie Theater)