Jen Benka

The Volume 25, #2, January/February, 2003 edition of the American Book Review features a fabulous review of Jen Benka's tour de force of poetry A Revisioning of the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States.

Reviewer Bob Grumman wrote that the Preamble "...was a collection of poems, good poems..." with the final poem of the book described as "...a masterful poem...". He finishes his review with the observation that the ...The Preamble... [book] is appealingly designed by Mark Wagner..." - Booklyn's director of Publication.

A Revisioning of the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States by Jen Benka, 2003, published by Booklyn in a deluxe first edition of 50.

NYC poet Jen Benka wrote one poem for each of the fifty-two words in the nation's preamble to the Constitution in an effort to examine, expose, and rewrite the document one word at a time.

The Preamble book, designed by artist Mark Wagner, offers handy index tabs and sport hand-sewn bindings and letterpress-printed covers. Wagner's artist books have been collected by museums and libraries from sea to shining sea, and exhibited in New York both by the Brooklyn and Metropolitan Museums.

Jen Benka lives in New York City and is the managing director of Poets & Writers, Inc. She has published work in So To Speak, Off Our Backs, Ms. Magazine, The Progressive, and on Cafemo.com and La Petite Zine. She has received grants from the Poetry/Film Workshop, Xeric Foundation, and Intermedia Arts, and was awarded a 2001 poetry fellowship from the Wisconsin Arts Board. She co-organized a 24-hour reading of the complete poems of Emily Dickinson, which took place in June 2002 in New York City.

In the collections of:
Boston Public Library, MA
Brooklyn Museum of Art Library, NY
Klingspor Museum, Offenbach, Germany
Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge
Milwaukee Art Museum, WI
Milwaukee Public Library, WI
Multinomah County Public Library, Portland, WA
Pacific Northwest Collge of Art, Portland, WA
Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
University of California at Irvine
University of California at Santa Barbara
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
University of Washington, Seattle, WA
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Wellesley College, Wellsley, MA

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