Poetry. IF YOU LIKE DIFFICULTY presents Jan Clausen's controversial playful language and unapologetic assertions as a tour de force as "Shakespearean as it is June Jordean." IF YOU LIKE DIFFICULTY treads its heavy feet across the plains of what some have left blithely contented. In a variety of speech (bridged bite of lyric or agile bounding narrative phrases--all composed of wit and bright shards of anger and loving, Clausen's poems will not surrender to the inept. Jan Clausen is also the author of the memoir Apples and Oranges (Houghton Mifflin).

Author City: Brooklyn, NY USA

Jan Clausen was born in North Bend, Oregon, in 1950. Clausen attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in philosophy and dropping out after her junior year. She wrote poetry and began to publish in little magazines. In 1973, she moved to New York City, and soon came out into a vibrant lesbian feminist community, finding an audience for her writing via its poetry readings and growing small press movement. She cooperatively published her first book, the poetry collection after touch, in 1975. Since 1989, Clausen has taught creative writing at Eugene Lang College, Manhattan, where she is active in her faculty labor union, ACT-UAW. She also teaches in the Goddard College MFA Writing Program.