Jane Rohrer

Jane Rohrer

Jane Rohrer was one of the first Mennonite poets to be published in a major literary journal. She was born Jane Turner in 1928 in Broadway, Virginia. She was the second child out of six and lived on a large farm where her father raised horses. Her mother was an active  member of the Virginia Conference Mennonite church seh attended.

Jane attended Eastern Mennonite College where she met Warren Rohrer. They married after Jane’s junior year and she left college to support herself and her husband. The couple moved to a farm outside of Philadelphia and drifted away from the Mennonite church. On the farm, Jane became a dedicated gardener and grew everything the family ate while her husband painted.

After her sons went to college, Rohrer began seriously writing poetry. She studied poetry with Steve Berg, editor of The American Poetry Review.  She published some poems in the late 1970’s which were influenced by poetic and painterly notions of expression. These poems have a Zen-like sense. 

Her husband Warren was diagnosed with leukemia in 1979. Rohrer's writing became less frequent after this event, but she then began writing with more intensity a few years later. Some of her poems were published in The American Poetry Review in 1985. Rohrer publised a book of poetry, Life After Death, in 2002. The collection explores grief with an imaginative style.