Welcome to Jean LeBlanc Poetry

Reading at Poets on the Loose, Warwick, NY, February, 2010. Photo by Barbara Tripi.
Reading at Poets on the Loose
Warwick, NY – February, 2010
Photo by Barbara Tripi. The study of poetry is my life's work. My mantra is “deliberation, discretion, expression,” and from there my own poems, poetry workshops, teaching, and editing take flight. Deliberation exists in the act of seeing, the act of naming what one sees. Discretion is the patient search for the poem, which is hidden somewhere beyond the thing one initially sees and names—I think of a poem as the thing behind the thing behind the thing. Expression is the journey of writing, a new journey with each new poem.

Contemporary poetry is especially vibrant here in northwestern New Jersey. I am fortunate to live in a place where every poetic form—free verse, sonnets, haiku, to name a few—provides inspiration to a community of writers who cherish this art. I have offered workshops on a variety of topics, from Ideas and the Poetic Imagination, to Writing Persona Poems, to The Haiku Aesthetic. In my classes and in my workshops, I am always amazed by the way inspiration and knowledge and discovery flow both ways. I am amazed at how I start off as the teacher but quickly become the student, as words shape a new reality.

"Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar," Shelley wrote in his Defense of Poetry. Did I say the study of poetry is my life's work? It is, actually, for me, life itself.