Karren Alenier

Karren LaLonde Alenier (born Karren LaLonde May 7, 1947, in Cheverly, Maryland, USA) is an American poet, librettist, essayist and editor and author of eight poetry collections.

Karren Alenier
Born	Karren LaLonde (1947-05-07) May 7, 1947 Cleverly, Maryland
Alma mater	University of Maryland, College Park
Occupation(s)	Poet, Librettist, Essayist and Editor

Her poetry and fiction have been published in many English language journals and literary publications.

Life

Alenier grew up in Maryland. She started school in Baltimore. As her family grew in size, they moved closer to her mother's family around the Greater Washington D.C. area. Her family was always involved in music. Her stepfather, Leon Marx, was a drummer in a dance band, her brother Jay plays ornamented jazz on the piano, her sister Nancy learned violin with the concert master of the National Symphony Orchestra, and her youngest sister Lisa performed tap, ballet, jazz, and belly-dancing.

Alenier began writing when she was in grammar school. Her serious work developed after she left college.

Achievements

In 1982, Alenier worked with writer/composer Paul Bowles on several of the Stein poems associated with the opera libretto Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On.

Alenier interviewed Paul Bowles and the interview was published in Gargoyle Magazine #24 and later in Conversations with Paul Bowles by Gena Dagel Caponi.

From 1989 through 1992, she was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts where she researched and drafted poems that would be published in Looking for Divine Transportation.

In 1995, Alenier worked with James Ragan in Prague on what would become her fourth collection of poetry. This collection, titled Looking for Divine Transportation was awarded the 2002 Towson University Prize for Literature. The work contained her poems about Gertrude Stein, her travels in Morocco, her eccentric family, and her own brand of Eden. The book opens with her poem Bearing Up, winner of the first Billee Murray Denny Award in 1981.

In 1996, her collection of poems Bumper Cars: Gertrude Said She Took Him for a Ride was published by Mica Press of Ft. Collins, Colorado. The work contained a selection of her Stein poems and a draft of Act I of Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On. In 1998, Alenier delivered the first publication reading of Bumper Cars in the Motor City of Detroit in the Writer's Voice Series during one of the last poetry programs at the old YMCA before it was demolished.

On February 3, 1996, on the anniversary of Gertrude Stein's birth, Alenier and 12 other poets spoke the lines contained in this then one act tableau vivant verse play.

Based on an invitation to read the Stein work at Washington, DC's Grace Church in Georgetown, Alenier wrote two more acts for the Georgetown program scheduled for April 8, 1997. Act II was written in one week in Florence, Italy. On April 8, 1997, again enlisted help from poets, including Hilary Tham as Gertrude Stein to read the first full draft of Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On.

Alenier, whilst writing Act III, began to understand the play's potential for opera. She looked around for a composer. Jeffrey Mumford was recommended to her by the Dean of Music at Howard University. They attempted to get financial support for the project without success.

In 1998, Alenier enlisted composer William C. Banfield and they took their idea to Nancy Rhodes, the artistic director of Encompass Music Theatre (now known as Encompass New Opera Theatre). In June, 2005. Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On had its premiere at Symphony Space Thalia Theatre.

In June 1999, Alenier received favourable reviews for her collection entitled Looking for Divine Transportation.

In 2003, Google re-published a series of books with the common theme ‘Greatest Hits’. Alenier's work was entitled Karren LaLonde Alenier Greatest Hits 1973-2002. (The original publisher was Pudding House Press).

In 2007, Alenier had a collection of essays, interviews, reviews, and a contemporary libretto published entitled The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas. The book gives a history about how her opera came about, has her opera libretto, history of how she became an arts critic with emphasis on contemporary opera.

In 2008, Alenier wrote an academic paper entitled On To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays-Was Gertrude Stein Medievalist, Futurist or Both?. She presented this paper in September 2008 at “Lifting Belly High: A Conference on Women’s Poetry since 1900” at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA.

Alenier's sixth collection of poetry titled On a Bed of Gardenias: Jane & Paul Bowles was published in 2012. In the collection she unfolds the love story of Jane Auer and Paul Bowles.

Alenier is a Stein scholar who has given workshops on Gertrude Stein and Tender Buttons including a workshop, in 2012, inspired by Gertrude Stein, held at the Stanford in Washington Art Gallery and later at the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

In 2016, The Anima of Paul Bowles, a full-length poetry collection, was published by MadHat Press.

On April 15, 2021, Alenier had a new collection how we hold on published. Her themes were how we love, how we deal with loss, how we find our place in the world, and how we relate to family and heritage.

In 2023, Alenier enlisted 36 poets to respond to Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons Objects. The result was her work entitled From the Belly: Poets Respond to Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, volume I.

Alenier has been involved in organizations and programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Library of Congress.

Since her first book of poetry was published in 1975, she has had an active role in The Word Works, a nonprofit literary and educational organization. She was responsible for creating these public programs for The Word Works: the Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry Series (1976-2022, later known as Joaquin Miller Poetry Series, in Rock Creek Park at the Miller Cabin in Washington, DC), Poet's Jam (1983–1984 at Glen Echo Park, Glen Echo, MD), the Young Poets Competition (established 1988, later known as the Jacklyn Potter Young Poets Competition), the Tuscany Castle Arts Retreat (1997–2003 at the Castello di Montegufoni, Montespertoli, Italy), Café Muse Literary Arts Salon (established 1999, Bethesda and Chevy Chase, MD).  

On the book publishing side, she helped create the annual Washington Prize (est. 1981) and she founded the Capital Collection (est. 1989, later renamed the Hilary Tham Capital Collection).

From 2013 to 2021, Alenier was active with Splendid Wake, an archival literary group putting on public programs at The George Washington University library.

Alenier has been active in the Washington, DC literary community. She has done readings with prominent poets such as Linda Pastan (Lit Balm Reading Series, September 4, 2021).

Alenier was first president of the Poetry Committee of the Greater Washington DC Area at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Alenier was a reader in Grace Cavalieri’s The Poet and the Poem series and was referenced by the poet Kim Roberts.

Since 1978, she is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers.

Education

University of Maryland, College Park, Bachelor of Arts with honors, 1969.

(Majoring in French literature and language with a heavy minor in American and English literature).

Works

• Wandering on the Outside 1975
• The Dancer's Muse 1981
• Whose Woods These Are edited by Karren LaLonde Alenier 1983
• Bumper Cars: Gertrude Said She Took Him for a Ride 1996
• Looking for Divine Transportation 1999
• Winners: A Retrospective of the Washington Prize edited by Karren LaLonde Alenier, Hilary Tham, Miles David Moore 1999
• Karren LaLonde Alenier Greatest Hits 1973-2002 2003
• Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On 2005
• The Steiny Road To Operadom: The Making Of American Operas 2007
• On a Bed of Gardenias: Jane & Paul Bowles 2012
• The Anima of Paul Bowles 2016
• how we hold on 2021
• From the Belly: Poets Respond to Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons Volume I Objects edited by Karren LaLonde Alenier 2023

Awards

Billee Murray Denny Award (1981)

Towson University Prize for Literature (2002)