Jayne Elisa Marek

Jayne Marek, a much loved and accomplished poet, passed away January 9, 2025, at her home in Port Townsend, Washington. She dedicated her life to poetry, scholarship, and the arts, and lived in service to her community of students and colleagues. She is survived and deeply missed by her loving husband of nearly forty years, Joe, her sister Gayle (David) Roehm, her brother Mark (Jeannie) Menich, her extended family, and all the friends who studied, wrote, marched, sang, danced, and ran with her. Sylvester, her beloved cat, misses her dearly. 

 Jayne was extraordinarily honest, courageous, and tender-hearted in her writing and in her life. She was known and respected for her fierce intolerance of cruelty, especially towards animals. Jayne possessed a remarkable ability to imagine the inner lives of others, including animals and plants, and to evoke their experiences and emotions. She also possessed an insightful sense of humor that drew others to her. Jayne had music in her voice.

 A gathering to celebrate Jayne’s life will be held in the spring–details to be announced soon. In lieu of flowers, please consider making charitable contributions in remembrance of Jayne to your nearest no-kill animal shelter, or to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society / Team in Training (with whom Jayne ran marathons to raise money for blood cancer research in memory of her father.) 

 Jayne Elisa Marek (nee Menich) was born October 16, 1954, in Elgin, Illinois to David and Lorraine Menich. She grew up in Cary, Illinois and graduated from Cary-Grove High School in 1972. She earned her B.A. in English with a concentration in Women in Contemporary American and British Literature (St. Olaf College, 1976). The St. Olaf Paracollege program helped her develop her gifts for self-directed study and independent thinking. While there she encountered the groundbreaking No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women which influenced her research and writing for the rest of her life. 

 Jayne earned her M.A. in English (Washington State University, 1980), her Ph.D. in 19th and 20th-Century American and British Literature (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1991), and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing (The University of Notre Dame, 2005). While working on her doctorate, she also made time to compile the reference work Poetry Index 1912-1997, which was a labor of love and many years. Her book Women Editing Modernism: “Little Magazines” and Literary History gave long overdue credit to women editors for their essential and previously invisible roles in the rise of Modernist literature.

 At Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, Washington), as a Fulbright Scholar at Lajos Kossuth University (Debrecen, Hungary), and at Franklin College (Franklin, Indiana) she created and taught innovative courses in a wide variety of fields. Course titles included “Critical Theory for the Humanities: Plato and Charlie Chaplin in Hyperdrive,” “Film Theory and East Central European Cinema,” and “The CSI Effect: Forensic Investigation and Crime Stories.”

 In 2015 she retired from teaching and moved, with Joe, to Port Townsend to devote herself full-time to her poetry. Over the past decade she published poems in dozens of journals and in her own books. Her most recent books are Dusk-Voiced (2024) and Torrential (currently at press). She was deeply grateful to the local writing community who took her in and supported her work. The birding and natural history communities were also a great source of inspiration to her. She was delighted to be able to spend more time outdoors in the mountains and on the water. Her close observations of animals and plants informed and enriched her poetry.

 Her energy for artistic expression was irrepressible. Jayne made art prints with the local printers’ guild and published abstract nature photographs in a variety of literary journals. She took enormous delight in seeing several of her bee photographs published in the New York Times Spelling Bee feature. In recent years she also earned her ham radio license and was certified as a community emergency response volunteer. On occasion, Jayne proudly donned her orca costume to dance and sing with friends at demonstrations in support of salmon and orcas. Jayne deeply loved Port Townsend, the Olympic Mountains, the Salish Sea, the many friends she made here, and all the dear friends who supported and encouraged her throughout her life.