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Mother’s Day Gift Guide lists two poetry books by Janet Ruth Heller

Stephanie Sumner has included two of my poetry books, Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press) and Exodus (WordTech Editions), in her Mother’s Day Gift Guide. You can find the listing at

2020 Mother’s Day Gift Guide

Folk Concert concerns the journey of becoming a woman during difficult times. Themes include feminism, love relationships, college teaching, nature, psychotherapy, travel, the anti-Vietnam War movement, family, the life of an artist/entertainer/writer, and music. 

The poems in Exodus are modern re-interpretations and psychological explorations of the people and events in the Bible. A central metaphor is the exodus from Egypt, which represents the journeys that people make: trying new experiences, leaving a bad relationship, finding a new job, taking risks. Many of the poems are dramatic monologues from the perspective of a character in the Scriptures.

Cover of the poetry book Folk Concert: Changing Times
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Janet Ruth Heller

I am the past president of the Michigan College English Association. I have a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. I have published four poetry books: Nature's Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Communications, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011). My scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama, was published in 1990 by the University of Missouri Press. My fiction picture book about bullying for children, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 7th edn. 2022), has won four national awards. My play The Cell Phone won fourth place in a national contest and was performed twice at the Fenton Village Players One-Act Play Festival on June 24-25, 2011 in Fenton, Michigan. Triton College produced another play, Pledging, as part of its Tritonysia Play Festival in May 2017. Choeofpleirn Press published Pledging in Rushing Through the Dark (2022).