Migrations: Poetry and Prose for Life’s Transitions ed. by Sheila Packa

By Dan Sinykin 

Here is the end of the poem “Divided,” by Amy Jo Swing:

There’s

a bit of panic now that the anticipation of

color is gone. Now that the drive home is dark,

color only memory, and even shape is suspect.

These are haunting lines, especially as we pivot toward another Minnesota winter. The repetition of the word now places us in the moment after we have seen what we waited for. The recognition that each day is growing shorter than the last is as much about the turning of the calendar as it is about a mental state. The feeling of claustrophobia that can come after private joy, when suddenly the world looks hostile.

This is only one of the many moods evoked by the collection Migrations, which brings together dozens of writers from the north country, young and old, polished and raw. The book feels, above all, like a community event. It is an intimate gathering, because poetry, whether in verse or prose, provides a forum for people to express emotions and stories that otherwise often stay hidden.

Beverly Hanks remembers how her father walked thirty miles through the snow from a Depression-era job to make it home in time for Christmas, carrying oranges for her in a pair of wool socks. Molly Tillotson works through why she never returned to Antarctica after that first time. Jasmine Baumgart discovers the power she feels from feminism. Rocky Kiukanpi writes about a place where, in his words, “the center of the world is everywhere.”

The theme of the collection is “life’s transitions.” As one might expect, a great many of the pieces deal with birth or death, lyric celebrations or elegies of longing. At their best, they catch us off guard with a startling image or an unsentimental turn of phrase. The very pregnant narrator of Linda LeGarde Grover’s “Parturition, a Poem for Brenda,” imagines she sees her dead grandmother in a window, only to discover herself in a mirror, “an ageless crone at twenty-two.” Or, in Gary Boelhower’s elegy, “Between Us” he writes:

Sometimes the distance

            between us is light years,

                        you in your dying, me

in my planning to keep

            the flowers watered and

                        get the house painted

The phrase “you in your dying,” paired with daily chores, hits me, at least, with the poignance of the sort of tediousness of death, its everyday-ness.

Alongside birth and death we return, as always, to the seasons. Ellie Schoenfeld writes:

We have no idea

what the sun will

call back to life,

his warm fingers digging deep

into the winter

which is melting away

inside of us.

If the end of autumn brought panic, here the spring thaw brings resurrections we may not have expected. The shortest poem in the collection, “Emergence” by Cindy Spillers, expresses not surprise, but – like it or not – the inevitable rebirth of spring:

Tenacious crocus

Erupts through frozen darkness.

No turning back now.

The Beat

by Steve Downing

We recently had some feedback from a listener who wondered why I had read a poem by Shanthi Siva on The Beat---why not Shanthi, herself, reading it?

Fair question. Simple answer: Shanthi has no access to a recording studio and is perfectly happy to have other readers interpreting her work. She’s not alone. There are other poets in The Beat file right now who can’t provide quality recordings and have no qualms about someone else reading their poems on-air. It’s our preference to have writers reading their own work, but occasionally the overriding goal of getting someone onto the program will trump that preference.

By the bye, I heard from Shanthi after we ran her poem, and she loved how it sounded. So did her friends and family. Some of them accessed it from India, where Shanthi was born. The world is listening to The Beat.

Listen for The Beat after Best Wishes, between 7:30 and 8:00 Monday through Friday mornings and then again before NPR’s All Things Considered in the afternoon. The Beat is funded by Minnesota’s Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.

Billy Collins is Coming to Northern Minnesota!!!

by Heidi Holtan


I'm not someone who complains that there isn't enough to do up here in northern Minnesota, but I do miss opportunities. But this one I WILL NOT MISS! Coming up Saturday September 25th Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins will be in Bemidji. A poetry reading? Sounds stuffy! But here's the thing: it's Billy Collins. The farthest thing from stuffy. He's real and funny and smart and has this way of making you forget that what he's doing is reading poetry. The New Yorker wrote "What Collins does best is turn an apparently simple phrase into a numinous moment.... a poet of plenitude,irony and Augustan grace."

You can hear Billy Collins on Saturday September 25th at the Bemidji High School Auditorium at 7:30pm. Tickets are available at the Headwaters School of Music and the Arts 218-444-5606 or at KAXE 218-326-1234.

You can also hear Billy Collins this week on Realgoodwords - Wed. September 8th(6pm) with a rebroadcast on Sunday September 12th (9am). Also on the show this week is Christopher McDougall author of "Born to Run - A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen". McDougall's book has become an international movement - with an idea at the center that the answer to pain free running and endurance is to run barefoot. YES, run barefoot. Stay tuned!

Christopher McDougall will be in Minnesota - in Wayzata at The Bookcase on Wednesday September 15th.

The Tender Wild Things, by Diane Jarvenpa, and Nude in Winter, by Francine Sterle: Book Reviews

by Nathan Bergstedt

The Tender Wild Things, by Diane Jarvenpa, and Nude in Winter, by Francine Sterle, are two books of poetry by Minnesota women authors that delve deep in the realm of descriptive language. Though the topics at the root of their writing; their muse, if you will, are worlds apart.

Jarvenpa, whose grandparents emigrated from Finland, uses touches of her ancestral culture, and the aspects that join that culture with the one we now live, as fresh fodder for unfolding her poems. On each page she paints a picture of her personal world; what she sees and experiences, and how these elements have shaped her as a person. She acknowledges our overall relationship to the natural world, and presents in her poems our collective desire to seek and harvest (that is, to make our own, and hopefully become part of) the tender wild things of the world.

Just as imaginatively, Francine Sterle, in her book Nude in Winter, attempts to blur the lines between visual and written art by presenting this series of poems about, well, visual art. As a translator has to interpret writing from one language in order to put it into a new one, so does Sterle with these poems, though their original language was never written. But unlike a true conceptual series, the poems vary from describing a particular work of art, to some that are about the artists themselves. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, and it can certainly make for stronger individual poems. But it does take away from what could’ve been a stronger central idea that the book on the whole seems to be about.

But with great honesty to her subjects, she molds the style of each poem to best suit the mood of the referenced piece. She writes not just with words, but also with structure, and with wonderful results.

Both of these books are rich with poems written by observers. Whether the subjects involve the natural world and how we try to immerse ourselves in it, or whether they’re objects of previous artistic thought and emotion, both books offer an opportunity to view the world through the author’s eyes. Which one you read depends on what you want to see.

The Tender Wild Things is published by New Rivers Press, and Nude in Winter is published by Tupelo Press.

The Chain Letter of the Soul, by Bill Holm: Review

By Nathan Bergstedt

Minnesota poet, Bill Holm’s, latest book, The Chain Letter of the Soul, is like so many last books: a tribute to a life’s work. Holm passed away on February 25th, 2009, at the age of 65, but left behind a wealth of written art.

The Chain Letter of the Soul is a compilation of new and selected poems from previous books, such as Box Elder Bug Variations, The Dead Get By with Everything, and Playing the Black Piano. The writing in this book, though it’s called poetry, is of a clear prose style which allows one not only a gateway into his mind, but a piggy-back ride with him on his travels, be it to Iceland, China, or what it is he sees looking out the window of his home in Minnesota.

Some artists merely document & present a world image from their eyes, creating a dialogue on a topic simply by bringing it up. Holm is not afraid to take a stand and give his opinion on matters. He evokes powerful images of destruction due to industrialization of untouched wildernesses, and the tearing of one’s soul due to greed and a blind eye to injustice. Aesthetically, such poems have the tendency to feel preachy, especially if it’s a viewpoint you yourself don’t share.

Though arguably not a political poet, by lending poetic criticism of certain popular mindsets, he’s certainly a social poet. With a consciousness of the people and the world around him, he makes his observations. But at the same time he has an apparent jealously of, say, box elder bugs, or at least all things naturally content and at peace with the world.

But the most important thing about this book is its accessibility. Steadily over the past century, poems have been lumped into a classification of lofty ideals and obscure abstractions, which you need a Harvard education to begin to understand. Historically, though, poetry has been a people’s art, very often read by the fireside with the family before the invention of television or radio. Much of The Chain Letter of the Soul attempts to bring poetry back to the people, written in a language spoken simply and clearly, but still with ideas of importance and beauty. Perhaps Holm explains his style best, in his new poem “I Began the Day in My Sixty-Fifth Year.” “So I babble away to myself, always in crisp, parsable sentences, adorned with the sizable word hoard I’ve filed away from reading these thousands of books for well over half a century.”

This book is a tribute to him. But like any honest tribute, it isn’t written by a devotee gushing over him. The words are his own, as he unapologetically speaks for himself.

The Chain Letter of the Soul is published by Milkweed Editions.

Phenology poetry from Ms. Hagelie's 4-5-6 graders at the Emily Charter School

Each week on phenology talkbacks with John Latimer, we get to hear students from around the region call in their phenology sitings. One of the regular contributors is from Ms. Hagelie's class at the Charter School in Emily. This week we got a treat of poetry inspired by white pines. Enjoy! (Thanks to Eli Sagor of My Minnesota Woods.org for the photos)

White Pine
White Pine of beauty,
Sticky sap and big pine cones,
Your beauty is so grand.
Roots that go so far,
Green needles against blue sky,
The king of trees is pine.

Written by:
Zinnia

White Pine Big Tree
It has rough bark,
It is the biggest tree ever.
It has lots of needles,
It also has big branches.
It has no leaves.

Written by:
Dawson

Old White Pine
Tall, thick, round, wide, rough,
Soft, pointy, odd,
Old White Pine

Written by:
Charles

White Pine
The White Pine is mossy,
It is hard.
It has thick branches,
It is tall and wide.
It has many branches,
Its needles fall off.
It has indentations,
Some branches are cut off.

Written by:
Ally

The White Pine
Its bark is rough,
Its rather tough.
Its tall and round,
Weighs more than a pound.
Its full of moss and needles,
Home to birds and beetles.
Its bark is as brown as a penny,
It is loved by many!

Written by:
Justine

Our White Pine
The branches are long.
It has lots of pine needles.
Trunk is really wide.

Written by:
Annie

White Pine
The big White Pine towers over the rest.
It’s a big rough and tough tree.
It’s bark is rough, it’s needles pointy,
It’s one great tree!
The branches twist and turn,
Our tree is a White Pine.

Written by:
Nasha

White Pine
So sweet and fine,
You’re the big White Pine.
You’re the biggest I can see,
You are bigger than those other trees.

Written by:
Riley