About

Jen Hoppough is done with her academic pursuits, and is running away so that she can run towards actually writing about life while living it. She received her M.A. at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2012 where she wrote her thesis Author First, Asian American Second: How a Literary Shift in Asian American Literature is Contributing to a New Wave of Authors. In the same year, she published the first chapter of her memoir A Reason for Being in the literary journal Prick of the Spindle.  She received her M.F.A in Creative Writing in 2016. She launched her blog The Echo Muse in 2017 where she shares her work of essays, and excerpts of fiction projects. She writes and shares all things about Alaska, traveling, food, cooking, and gardening in the Ma Vie En Rose section of her blog.

The Echo Muse is inspired by one of my favorite Victorian poets, Christina Rossetti.  The Victoria Poetess was oftentimes known to be associated with the brotherhood of the Pre-Ralphaelites, and in particular her brother, Dante. Her poems centered on a longing for a love that we all long for in this world, but for some, never to attain. There is beauty for such longing.

Echo
BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
Come to me in the silence of the night;
   Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
   As sunlight on a stream;
      Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
   Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
   Where thirsting longing eyes
      Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
   My very life again tho’ cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
   Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
      Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.