The books I’ve published are mostly poetry, with two novels and a number of artbooks. My work tends to the emotional narrative, sometimes in a straightforward manner, sometimes embracing the absurd. No one has ever accused me of throwing a softball, my work reflects the violence as well as the virtue of the world.
I have been writing in earnest since I was nine years old, nearly 40 years now! After a decade plus in the Indie Press world, I made the decision to create my own imprint, Hagstone Books, and to only self-publish my work for the time being.
You can find here some of my most recent publications, under my nom de plume, Nettie Zan, and under my given name, Jeanette Powers.
I keep five books at a time available for sale at my online store. Click here to see what’s up now and check back as selection rotates.
Scroll down for links and info for essays!
American Foursquare
Teenage best friends witness a devastating act of violence which shapes the trajectory of their lives. The novel finds them reunited after two decades with unprocessed grief, love, and history between them.
The narrative of the book switches between our two star-crossed friends, a sibling, and the house that lives next door to the church. The house is an American Foursquare, a kit house from the turn of the 20th century which “could be built by any man of average skill in a few months.” The house remembers becoming home, and has witnessed three generations of white mid-western, lower middle-class, fundamentalist trauma. The house knows all the secrets.
The characters struggle with mental health due to family violence and addiction, and feel called to extreme measures to set things right in their small worlds.
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Everything I Never Told
You is All I Have
Left to Say
Bitter Crone finds herself at death’s door and ruminating on her life. She pens a number of letters she never intends to send to people of her past. She holds no punches with her disdain for wasted time, her unresolved pain, and surprising forgivenesses.
This book of prose poetry epistolary poems was written over the course of my own mother’s fateful struggle with Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease, a rare, fatal prion disease that takes the life of the patient in just a few months. The narrator is bitter and mean, and I assure you that is me speaking, not my mother, who was kind and sweet and loving in her last days. It is my pain bleeding out in these pages.
Nevertheless, don’t expect an essay in the loss of one’s mother. It’s certainly bitter crone dying and assessing her life, join her in facing her own certain demise.
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Sage
This very special printing is a large format, full color reproduction of my art book, Sage. This very book lives in the local artists collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum here in Kansas City, Missouri.
The book itself is originally made from banana paper, with wood, beads and banana leaves as the cover material. I have added a knotted hemp rope to the pages as a simulation of the complexity and power of a woman’s hair. In the original book, as the viewer turns the pages, they must comb the current pages hair with their hands in order to arrive at the next image. It demands a slow viewing, with much care and interaction. The drawings in Sage is a visual essay on the endurance and beauty of women. It includes portraits of women I admire, posited in relationship to one another.
Of course, the reproduction does not express this delicacy of the rope. However, I photographed the books pages in such a way that the viewer gets a feeling of the experience of the rope hair in each set of pages.
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Complete List of Books*
everything I never told you is all I have left to say | 2024, epistolary prose poems
a shame to point at the moon and see only the finger | 2024, persona poems
Weird on Top | 2023, poetry based on David Lynch’s film “Wild at Heart”
American Foursquare | 2023, novel
Poems for Alcoholics | 2022, poetry full-length
Victimless Crime | 2020, novel: Spartan Press
Dandylion Riot | 2019, poetry full-length book: Spartan Press
Dead Things I Excrete | 2019, poetry and art, created for “Things I Killed For You Today” one-person show
Killing Karma’s Goat | 2018, poetry chapbook: Analog Press, England
Sparkle Princess vs. Suicidal Phoenix | 2018, poetry: Spartan Press
America Stabbed James T Kirk in the Arm with a #2 Pencil | 2018, poetry: King Fu Treachery Press
Gasconade | 2018, poetry: NightBallet Press
To Grow a Hole the Size of Everything | 2017, poem by Jason Preu; illuminations by Jeanette Powers: Stubborn Mule Press
Perfectly Good Muses: the collected apologies of Jeanette Powers | 2017, poetry: Spartan Press
Beautiful Earthworms & Abominable Stars | 2017, poetry split with Ezhno Martin: EMP Books
Don't Lose Your Head | 2017, experimental poetry-art hybrid: EMP Books
The Cosmic Lost & Found | 2017, poetry split with Megan Specksgoor: Cringe-Worthy Poets Collective
Novel Cliché: aphorisms | 2016, micro-poems: 39 West Press
Tiny Chasm | 2016, poetry: 39 West Press
Earthworms & Stars | 2015, as the inaugural POP POETRY book: Spartan Press
Absolute Futility | 2012, poetry: Write the Future Press
*there may be more! what do i know?
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Interesting Essays I’ve Written
Contending with Your Ancestors
A longer essay which talks about where science and spirituality overlap as well as a foray into thinking about and listening to the wisdom of your ancestors.
STAR KIND
This essay chronicles a guided ritual with healer Moon, where she and I uncovered and remedied my belief that I was inherently unlovable. Bonus: video of me telling the story live at Truth in Comedy in 2023.
On Faith
Discussing my transition from hard atheist to faithful believer.
Dada Meditation
An early essay on meditation, not as thorough as the one written for the website, here. Interesting and mentions the Unified Will, the unified mind-body-spirit connection.
On Perception
A wonderful essay on turning on and off my hearing through meditation.