Surface, by Peter Munro

Swept among seas that walk downwind,
beaks and feathers wheel to hook and pick.
Skimming low, fulmars heel and spin
speed. Their twines knot the world to its quick.
I learn to listen with my skin.
Gusts kiss me, whispering their cold.
Caressed in tempos that whitecaps kick,
rust scours my vessel, fills her holds.
She presses into a surface nicked
by birds feeding where salt unfolds.

Fulmars

Night Train / Red Dust

About the project:

Night Train/ Red Dust began as a quest for my grandparents' stories. I grew up on the Vermilion Trail, also known as Highway 4, the road that runs through the Lake Superior National Forest, through the community of Island Lake, and to the Iron Range.  I learned this road was the original route to Lake Vermilion, and it was used since 1000 AD (by the Woodland Indian tribes whose burial mounds are found near Lake Esquagama). There is evidence of early mining among the Woodland Indians. In 1856, gold prospectors came to Lake Vermilion. The gold was there, but too difficult to extract from the quartz. Then iron ore was discovered. Around the small town of Biwabik (population 1500), the town where I went to elementary and high school, ten iron ore mines were working by the early 1900s and trains ran the length and breadth of the region.   


My grandparents came to upper Michigan and Minnesota's Iron Range in the early 1900s. Out of curiosity, I began to look at the community of the Iron Range when they arrived. The Iron Range culture was unique and similar to that of New York City because of the great diversity of cultures.There were nearly 40 languages spoken. Economic development happened fast, beginning a pattern of boom and bust common to many mining communities. 

As a result, I've created a narrative that uses historical research to tell my story along with the stories of many women who were instrumental to the Iron Range community from 1900 onward. These include Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, union organizer for the IWW; Meridel LeSueuer, journalist and writer; Charles and Mary Bray, doctors in Biwabik; Native Americans (Ojibwe and the earlier culture of Woodland Indians who created the burial mounds near Esquagama Lake); Rev. Milma Lappala, Unitarian minister; women miners in WWII; Finnish immigrant stories; Sigurd Olson, naturalist; the founders of the Mesaba Co-op Park; and others. These people were influential to many.  Flynn became one of the founders of the ACLU. This project has taught me so much about the place that I grew up, and in writing poems and stories, I hope to help others experience the strength of our roots. Some of my research can be viewed online at http://www.scoop.it/t/vermilion-trail/

Night Train / Red Dust performance is a sampling of a larger manuscript. These women's stories, so often lost or forgotten, are the inspiration of this work. The earlier stories of the progressive politics form a strong foundation for my own story. I came of age in the 1970s, in the era of civil rights, feminism, and gay rights.  

In this project, I began with family documents, and then I went to the Iron Range Resource Center.  The IRRC is a rich archive that provides excellent primary sources for writers.  As a poet, fiction writer, and essayist, I have visited the archive to listen to oral histories and browse through the materials.  I needed to dig a little deeper in order to find the stories of women.  Too often, these stories are not recorded or given much attention. The staff were very helpful, and they helped me find information. I found the photograph collection particularly meaningful, and some photographs of women miners became the inspiration to create stories.  http://www.ironrangeresearchcenter.org/rc5/women_at_work.htm

One of my grandmother's story was one of walking through domestic violence. She also had to contend with my grandfather's alcoholism.  The culture of the Iron Range is working class: men's work was arduous and physically dangerous, and it was not different for women. 

Rights for women were hard won and cannot be taken for granted. Women's bodies are not just their own; men, churches, states, governments and other groups continue to assert ownership and/or strictures. In order to become independent, a woman must confront these concerns. The women's stories I found renew my own strength.  

Mining interests and environmental issues are often in conflict. The goal of maximum profit can negatively impact quality of life.  It is a "double-edged sword."  The economic development of the area comes at a cost.  People on the Iron Range have a greater risk of mesothelioma, a lethal lung cancer often associated with asbestos. Taconite fibers are similar to those of asbestos. 

Right now, these tensions have flared again as the prospect of copper mines. Those who want to preserve the beautiful lake country have found themselves dealing with powerful corporate interests who push forward with the development of more mines.  

The mining companies at the turn of the century proved themselves to work against the interests of their employees; we shall soon see another wave of development, and I hope that fairness, environmental protection, and balance can be attained. As a friend told me, "We consumers contribute to the pressure. Everytime we buy an iPhone, iPad, or computer, we drive the need to acquire more minerals." 

The issues are complex. Creation of jobs and technologies are correlated with the destruction of the environment. Can we consume less? Can we get accountability from the corporations? Can the legislators act in the best interest of the people who live in these regions? Now is not the time to "tune out" or assume that others will address these questions on our behalf. We all need to participate in the information seeking and decision-making.  

Another important aspect of Night Train Red Dust and my creative work is the ongoing collaborative performance work I do with my life partner, Kathy McTavish. Because Minnesota has voted for marriage equality in 2013, we will be wed in August. She is a cellist, composer, video artist and software architect. We both are passionately engaged in creative work and push each other to deepen our art and find new ways to explore and share our work and sustain ourselves.  If you are curious about our projects, please visit: www.wildwoodriver.com and www.cellodreams.com

This project has received funding support from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council with money from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Fund and the McKnight Foundation.

postcard photograph by Magic Box Photography

Moving Days

This has been a sticky, sweaty, unrepentant month of DC summer--and a month of moving. I'm not someone who takes well to liminal spaces.  I speak no second languages because I can't bear the in-between of faltering, approximated phrases. I've been known to char sponges and dish towels because I start cleaning the stove before the burner is off. So it's very hard for me to function in these sprawling days; my instinct is to line up, to square away, to settle. As we have hand-carried our lives into this place, one box and bag at a time, the building itself has been mid-facelift as well. This should be our last week of scaffolding (and its accordant 8 AM wake-up call of construction clatter); the halls smell like new paint. Patience. 

When moving, writers are always preoccupied by the question Will I be able to write here? And the panicked answer is almost always, initially, No. Or to be more precise: Noooooo. The chair I used for three books is gone, the leather seat having worn away to flakes and threads. What has been my desk now feels, more than ever, like a dining table. The overhead fan makes a regular, undeniable clicking noise. All of which has had me lying awake at night, terrified that I've Made the Wrong Decision and Will Never Write Again. 

The antidote to this abstract and paralyzing fear is as simple as writing, of course. I'll get there. Part of growing older is learning to ignore my inner Harbinger of Doom and Self-Doubt. 

One must take comfort in small pleasures, like pint glasses that have been chilled in the freezer beforehand, from which one drinks Boddinger's Pub Ale while muddling through hour two of sorting fifteen years' worth of cds while one sits on a bare floor. When one really should be writing. Because one is overdue on three major deadlines. 

A beacon of encouragement has been that this will be a place where I cook. Often. Enthusiastically. There is a spice rack. The oven need not double as a storage unit for six pans. I can actually open my fridge AND my dishwasher, all the way--O the novelty! Because our apartment approximates tropical rainforest levels of humidity, and because my love works evenings, we've been experimenting with the art of the "odds & ends" lunch that consumes the day's perishables. So far my favorite has been a linguine based with onion, bacon, and red peppers, with avocado added for creaminess. Sauté all of that together with salt, pepper, and chili flakes, fold in a little spinach and squeeze in some lemon juice before serving--voila. Cooking is a creative process. If I can improvise with flavors, words will follow. 

I've also relished being back in town for readings, which included hearing Katherine Hill at Politics & Prose yesterday to celebrate the release of her debut novel, The Violet Hour. Her images were tight--she has a poet's ear for metaphor, but curbs it in proportion to dialogue. The premise, a family's outing on a boat, set up the right balance of claustrophobia, humor, and tangible action. She had a standing-room-only crowd and a long Q&A; the book sold out. At her reception afterwards, Katherine's father--a fellow Board member at the Writer's Center--poured glasses of cava spiked with creme de violette, while his wife prepped a cake made in the image of the book's cover. "Did I do all right?" she asked them, which is the exact same question I ask my parents after every reading. Yes, you did, Katherine. In fact you kinda kicked ass. So thrilling when you can feel the electricity of a book that is going to be big, and deserves to be.

Long story short, I am laying low for a bit. Not even reading--except for the Sunday New York Times, which now miraculously appears on my doorstep each week. I am unpacking. Perspiring. Conspiring. Devising salads. Debating "lemongrass" versus "jade" as a rug color. Wondering how to curb the ripening of bananas. Re-acquainting myself with Tryst. Updating addresses in umpteen databases. Cleaning closets. Pondering file cabinets. Figuring out the most efficient elevator routes for a building with nine external doors. Meeting the new neighbors, like this epic pup, who seems to share my disposition toward this weather. Onwards.  Sometimes, the secret to a move is just that you gotta keep moving. 

Oh! And before I forget, I have one lil' reading in August--at Baked and Wired, my sister's favorite Georgetown spot--with some vagabonds of poetry: Justin Boening, Miriam Bird Greenberg, and John Fenlon Hogan. Justin won the Poetry Society of America's National Chapbook Fellowship with "Self-Portrait as a Missing Person," and this fall he'll be the Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University. Miriam teaches ESL in San Francisco (when not wandering) and has had stints at both P-Town and as a Stegner Fellow. John has had work popping up all over the place, including Boston Review and Quarterly West. Diana Khoi Nguyen, who is organizing it all, is a powerhouse of poetry herself, a Columbia grad and a recent Bread Loaf waiter. Frankly, I'm not sure I'm cool enough to be part of this line-up. But I'm excited to hear these new voices. The "Omission Summer Poetry Tour" stops off in DC at 6 PM on Monday, August 5, free. 

Tika by Saradha Koirala

Goodbye takes the form of a
blessing.

My family press tika on our
foreheads

rupees into my palm.



Mountain-high through time
and air

the red paint dries, the
rice grains fall

leaving a trail that could
surely lead us home.



But sometimes you can't tell
what you've seen

until you close your eyes

and the imprint reveals



an inverted world of
darkened brights

and a pale sky

a halo

Poetry of Witness: Review of The Vigil, by Shelley Chernin, and Interview with the Poet

                                                                                    by Barbara Sabol

                                          

The Vigil

by Shelley Chernin

published by Crisis Chronicles Press, 2012

http://press.crisischronicles.com

Poetry of Witness.  The Vigil                                            

Some of the most powerful and memorable poetry reveals truths about the world—facts, figures, compass points on the map of human struggle, natural and man-made calamity, tyranny, war. The lyric impulse inherent in a poem pulls the reader, line by line, into a given sensibility; more effective, I believe, than any manifesto. Such is the case with two of the books previously reviewed in the Poetry Matters blog:  Robert Miltner’s Hotel Utopia (August, 2012) and Teneice Durrant Delgado’s Burden of Solace (Feb, 2013). Such is also true of Shelley Chernin’s chapbook, The Vigil, which chronicles coal mining disasters in West Virginia and India, and the environmental and human toll of mining.

This is a poem of witness, a narrative sequence depicting coal mining in tangible and riveting lines. In the compressed space of seven numbered sections, the poet reveals not just the events of two coal mining disasters, but also the underlying fabric of family, church and state in seemingly disparate but ultimately related cultures.  Although geographically and culturally India and West Virginia appear to be worlds apart, they are united by the raw resource beneath the earth, and by exploitation of the environment and the workers whose households depend on the mines. And while the sequenced sections in this collection are about specific coal mining disasters, they reveal the choke of breathing coal dust, the anticipation of its spark.  As poet B.H. Fairchild explains, if writing captures the isness of a thing, the work moves beyond expository prose into the lyric realm. In Chernin’s The Vigil, we are given both the aboutness of coal mining and its ontological isness, the flesh and blood experiences of mining.

In each poem context is immediately established; the reader is oriented to “Dhanbad, eastern Jharkhand state, Damodar River Valley” in the opening section. We are located in the region where “Lord Buddha attained enlightenment” and in the very same place where “the “ground exhales the smoke of coal fires. . .the second most polluted place in India.”  Thus the grit of the mine fields rubs its ugly hide against the abstract purity of Hinduism, a juxtaposition of the sweat and grit earthly existence to the sweet air of salvation that beats at the heart of the collection.

A domestic echo of that same juxtaposition is heard in the section that follows, as we are introduced to the blue/grime-collar world of Sago, West Virginia.  Faces, names and dates are attached to actual events for which the reader may have had no previous frame of reference. In  “2” local color is vibrant with characters and history stemming from the founding of the Sago Baptist Church “in 1856 by/Lucy Henderson, Hester Summerville. . .”  Details of the life of L.B. Moore, wounded Union soldier, temperance leader, Baptist minister, set the stage for the disturbing admixture of faith, politics and tragedy that shadows Sago.

The poet alternates the settings of West Virginia and India throughout the collection, with a progressive accumulation of physical and historical detail as we move from sections “1” to “7.” She also alternates form from one map point to the other:  the sections set in India are written in tercets, while the Sago sections square off in dense, block prose, exuding a fact-packed-in claustrophobia mimetic of the mines.  And while the Sago sections feature a full cast of miners, families, clergy, those in Dhanbad focus more on a privileged figure, a white collar man named Rutajit, who “studies mining engineering. . .plays cricket on collegiate fields” and indulges his hungers until “Rutajit feels full” (“3”).

In addition to the human figures in the poem, the mines and earth itself transform to predominant figures, as evidenced by allusions to vital organs and symptomatology.  In section “1,”  “. . .the ground exhales the smoke of coal fires,/burning in the viscera, perpetual dyspepsia. . .” Then again, in “4” the prayers at the Sago Baptist Church “circulated like oxygenated blood down through the national arteries. . .in search of the miners’ cells.”

In addition to the metonomy of ground-as-body, the poet constructs an additional metaphor connecting Dhanbad and Sago; that is, Sago as place name and sago as chief ingredient in an Indian delicacy, sabudana khichdi, which Rutajit eats to satiation. A delicious play on words occurs during a description of the proper preparation of the dish in section “3”

          . . .

          Cook until crisp. Garnish with coconut and cilantro.

          Do not cover the pan or the sago conglomerates

          into one lump. Sago thickens like tapioca and plots.

          Despite popular myths, white sago is no purer

          than the light cream variety. Rutajit feels full.

The verb “plots” here takes a number of semantic turns, droll and ominous.  In the closing section, “7,” the settings of West Virginia and India converge, as mining disasters in Sago are referenced along with those in Dhanbad.  Here, sago serves its double duty in the first stanza, as place name and as simile for a list of the perished West Virginia miners:

          In the month after the Sago disaster, four more

          miners died in mining accidents in West Virginia.

          Like miscooked sago, the flow of names congeals.

The final section closes on a significant similarity between the two―faith.  Faith despite the odds, despite the hardscrabble life into which the workers are born.  Deep inside the mine, in any coal mine, anywhere in the world, a scene unfolds:  “. . .The men died in denseness.  Unable to see/their own hands.  Thick in prayer.”

The poem sequence in The Vigil is thick with political, cultural, socio-economic and religious references, along with the stark, decidedly unromantic descriptions of the mines, the environmental devastation, the horrors of a mining disaster.  The poet deftly unites two distinctly different places― Sago, West Virginia and Dhanbad, India―vis-à-vis the destructive underbelly of the coal mining industry.  She manages this without moralizing, without sentiment.  The collection is mind- and heart-opening, instructive yet managing to avoid didacticism.  In a sure-voiced approach, grounded in tangible images, raw data, the poet presents the even-darker side of the coal mining industry. The speaker’s tone is neutral; the language minus drama or bombast.  She states the facts in a manner of reportage, creating effective tension between objective tone and inherent drama of the sensational and disturbing content of the poem.  The Vigil is a  poem that prods our awareness with palpable images of grit, heat, depth, darkness, breathlessness, of "dust and ashes," written by a poet of conscience who calls the reader to witness. 

Interview with the Poet, Shelley Chernin

Congratulations, Shelley, on the publication of The Vigil. This is an important collection not only for the strength of the poem—the language, rhythm, craft — but also because this is a poem of witness.  The lines lead us directly to the heart of coal country in India and in West Virginia, and into the environmental and personal tragedies associated with coal mining.  The reader stands among the families holding vigil after a mine cave-in, breath held.  It’s clear that the poet has some stake in the history and politics of coal mining, and that this collection shapes a statement about the topic, which leads to my first question:

B:  There is a sense that the poet felt compelled to write the poem sequence in The Vigil; they resonate with an urgency, a need to share the stories about the described mining incidents and the larger issues connected with the industry.  What led you to choose coal mining, in general, and these two specific locations in India and West Virginia, specifically, as a theme for your chapbook?

S: I wrote The Vigil as a single poem, a short time after the Sago Mine Disaster in 2006. Like the rest of the country, I followed the news closely for the two days that it took to determine that only one of 13 trapped miners had survived. Not long before the Sago disaster, I had read Sam Harris’ book The End of Faith, about the conflict between religious faith and rational thought. Throughout the long wait while rescuers tried to reach the trapped miners, a wait that included much public prayer, and in the days after, as Westboro Baptist Church members showed up for the miners’ funerals, I found myself grappling with the role of faith in this incident. As I began to write about it, a process that included research on Sago, West Virginia, I made the connection between the name of the town and sago the food, widely used in India, a country that also relies on coal and has a long history of mining disasters, and the parallel stories fell into place.

B:  I’m very interested in the voice throughout the poems, which feels objective and the tone more matter-of-fact reportage.  This is in stark contrast to the poems’ content, which is tragedy, above and below the earth’s surface, coupled with social and economic injustice and religious near-sightedness. There is a powerful tension created by that contrast which builds throughout the collection. Why did you choose the objective, third person narrator’s voice, versus a first person mode, such as persona, that would have lent greater subjectivity and emotion to the work?

S: It wasn’t a conscious choice, but I don’t think that I could have written the poem that I needed to write in the first person. I went back to my original notes for this poem to try to remember a little bit of what I was thinking when I wrote it, and I discovered this note to myself: “This needs to start at the surface and move down into the mine – perhaps drill into the earth from 2 sides, US and India?” I needed to start the poem at some distance from the core, literally and emotionally, in order to have room to move deeper. In fact, the poem starts in 1856 with the founding of a church. Understand that I have no personal connections with miners, West Virginia or India; I am not and never have been Christian or Hindu. It was the humanity of the stories that grabbed me.

B:  Larger factors related to the mining industry and disasters figure prominently in the poem; i.e., religious, economic, political spheres that coincide with the sub-standard conditions and dangers of mining.  I know you to be an engaged poet, with a world view that shows through the lines of your work.  What is the statement that you want to make about the connecting and controlling spheres that keep coal mining such a figuratively dark industry?

S: I work hard (against contrary internal tendencies) not to make statements in my poems. This is another reason for the third person narrator, I think. I would rather tell stories and let people come to their own conclusions. I could certainly tell you what I think about the coal mining industry in relation to the environment, to the economy, to government, to working conditions and safety. I could tell you what I think about religious belief and how it impacts the human condition. But I’m more interested in letting my poems do the work of moving people, perhaps in a way or to a place they’ve never been moved before. I must credit my daughter, Jessie Herzfeld, a painter, with this perspective, but I’ve always felt that if I could say what I wanted to say in some other, more straightforward way, then I wouldn’t bother to write a poem. Jessie says the same about her paintings when she’s asked what they’re about or what they mean.

B:  The forms in The Vigil are very distinct.  Can you talk about your choice of the prose form for the parts set in West Virginia, which alternate with the tercets of the India-based parts?  The reference-dense, block form seems mimetic of the claustrophobia of the mines, while the tercets , although equally detail-rich, seem to flow and “breathe” more easily.

S: I played around with form in my rewrites of this poem. It was originally written entirely in tercets. I settled on the prose form for the West Virginia sections not only because I liked the denser feel of that, but because I wanted it to be more conversational, to have the feel of an oral history. The space on the page in the India sections is a chance to catch your breath.

B:  There is so much material to mine, as it were, with all the elements and characters and events described in the poem.  Why just seven sections? And do you have plans to expand this collection?

S:  As I said, this was written all at once as a single poem in seven sections. I’ve tried on a couple of occasions to read parts of it aloud, but I don’t think they hold together on their own as individual poems.

B:  I’m struck by the degree of detail in the poem.  How much research did you do to make the poem so tangible with person, place, thing so precisely named and described– all very flesh-and-blood palpable. What research sources did you draw from?  And do you generally write the research-based poem, or would you say that your work is more experiential?

S: This was very much a research-based poem. I started with the news stories about the mining disaster, but ended up reading all kinds of material about the history of Sago, WV and its churches, mining disasters generally, mining in India, Westboro Baptist Church, Hinduism, etc. I found it all on the Internet. The State of West Virginia, Division of Culture and History, has a wonderful website with a wealth of historical documents.

I write both research-based poems and experiential poems. Many of my poems contain elements of both. The Vigil is more heavily research-based than most. 

B:  I see that your daughter did the cover art for the book. Very striking!  Do you and she collaborate on other art or writing projects?

S:  No, this is our first collaboration, and it wasn't a true collaboration because she didn't draw that picture for my poem.  When I was looking for cover art, I sent her a copy of tje poem to read and asked her if she had any art that might fit.  She suggested that drawing as a possibility.  I knew it was right as soon as I saw it.

B:  Can you tell us about your writing life?  You are a free lance writer as a profession and undoubtedly have a schedule for completing writing assignments and projects.  How do you balance non-creative writing that you do for a living with your creative writing? Do you have a routine or rituals around your poetry writing?

S: I need to confess that I’m a terrible procrastinator. My professional work involves lengthy writing projects that must be completed by a deadline. I’ve been working as a freelancer for almost three decades, and I still haven’t learned to pace myself. I regularly find myself in a crunch to get a work project completed, and during those crunch times, I don’t write much poetry. Mostly, I’ll write a poem if I need something new to take to a workshop, although there have been times in my life when poems happen without the push of a deadline. It’s not all that unusual for me to be at the computer, writing a legal form, and suddenly have a poem idea that I need to write down. Sometimes I have a poetry document and a work document open on my computer at the same time and switch back and forth between them.

B:  You also write songs – lyrics and music – and accompany yourself on the ukulele. We recently had the pleasure of hearing you perform at The Root Café! So, when the muse strikes, and you begin to compose, how can you tell whether lyrics to a song or a poem will emerge?

S: My process for writing songs is very different from my process for writing poems. Songs come as songs, melody and lyrics together. When I sit down to write a song, I either write with the ukulele in hand or I’m hearing a tune in my head and putting lyrics to the tune. Parts of some of my songs have been written while I was jogging. I think the rhythm of running helps stimulate music and lyrics.

B:  What project(s) are you currently working on?  Is there a next collection in process?

S: I’m not focused on any particular project. I tend to write whatever comes up for me in the moment. As a result, I’ve written a wide variety of poems that don’t necessarily fit together. Over the last five years or so, I’ve on and off written poems in the voice of a fictional dead poet, an academic blowhard who writes about both his life and being dead. I find that for whatever reason, I’m fond of my dead poet and keep coming back to him. I hope I’ll have enough poems for a collection someday, but it could be a long time.

Shelley Chernin is a freelance writer and ukulele player.  Her poems have appeared in Great Lakes Review, Scrivener Creative Review, Rhapsodia, Durable Goods, Big Bridge and in the anthology, What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon (Kattywompus Press, 2011). Shelley was awarded 2nd place in the 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest and Honorable Mention in the Akron Art Museum's New Words Poetry Contest in 2009 and 2010.  Her debut chapbook, The Vigil, was published by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2012.





Bonfire of Roses

"Bonfire of Roses" is a phrase from Meridel LeSueur's essay in her book, Ripenings.  Meridel LeSueur had a powerful presence and reading voice that made me shiver the one time I heard her read her poems. I consider her my literary grandmother.

Check out this video-poetry that features three of my poems from Night Train Red Dust set into film by Kathy McTavish. She composed the music that was played by the Zeitgeist New Music Quartet in St. Paul.

bonfire of roses from Wildwood River on Vimeo.

To find out dates and times, visit the Fringe Festival web-page
at http://www.fringefestival.org/2013/show/?id=2418

Kathy McTavish and Sheila Packa
photo by Magic Box Photography

A Garage by Robert Gray

In one of the side streets

of a small hot town

off the highway


we saw the garage,

its white boards peeling

among fronds and palings.


The sun had cut a blaze

off the day. The petrol pump
was from the sixties—


of human scale
and humanoid appearance
it had a presence,

seemed the attendant
of our adventures on the road,
the doorman of our chances.

We pulled in, for nostalgia,
onto

Opening the Eyes

Opening the eyes is one of the important benefits of art and poetry. A work is truly great if it can make us see differently.  One of my missions in Night Train Red Dust was to restore lost history of women. Any geographic area has layers of geology, people, and events. Do you know what happened in the place beneath your feet? Who walked on the same ground where you travel?

Women's stories are often forgotten. They are not considered "important" in the way the city builders and bridge builders and presidents, which is a terrible omission.  New biographies of women are changing the telling of history.  These new perspectives are essential.  Our geography has a spectrum of color. Aside from white immigrants, the First People, Native Americans, travelled on these rivers and pathways.  Highway 4 from Duluth to the Iron Range, once called the Rudy Perpich Memorial Highway, once called the Vermilion Trail began as an Indian path. It was used in 1850s for exploration.  In the 1860s, Civil War veterans arrived with the Gold Rush and they travelled on the Vermilion Trail to Lake Vermilion.  The gold wasn't accessible, but iron ore was discovered. Corporate interests paid the Anishinabe people in 'scrip' in exchange for the land. The people did not resist being relocated as the mining companies moved in to drill and excavate.  These stories are essential.



"White Flights: Fiction's Racial Landscape" by Jess Row in the July/August 2013 Boston Review examines the landscapes of white American writers who create characters "around remote, awe-inducing landscapes peopled by quirky, salt-of-the-earth, hard-living folks, nearly all of whom happen to be white."  I recognized that what he said was true.  Jess Row asserts, "'realist' writers believe that individuals are best exposed against a largely erased background."  In his consideration of these landscapes, he uses the term deracination. This rootlessness or removal of racial issues from fiction exposes white privilege and a fantasy of escape.  This is an important essay; he illuminates an erasure that happens in these stories, an erasure of people of color.  We need to consider the implications of this.

Jess Row has pinpointed a sort of cultural blindness in "mainstream" culture. This happens in history books. This happens in all sorts of writing, including poetry.  These landscapes are not representational but false, fraudulent. It isn't just the writers, but the publishers, the critics, and the readers that have an investment in this. The consequence is a perpetuation of racism. These many fictions of such landscapes lead to a distortion in our perceptions of reality. I believe a similar kind of erasure happens to women's stories and those of lesbian, gay, transgender people. Sexism flourishes. Women are denied agency, authority, and influence. American culture tends to focus too much on white male experience to the point of marginalizing other experiences equally, if not more, important. It happens to immigrants. These people aren't clearly seen. Their experiences are dismissed; their writing isn't read; they are washed out of the cultural history and story-making to great detriment.

It reminds me of words of the artist Mona Smith. She belongs to the Dakota tribe, and she initiated the Memory Map (Bdote) project in Minnesota.  In 1862, there was a large public execution of 30 Dakota Indians happened near Fort Snelling. She began to collect stories, record memories, assemble the art, writing, experience of Dakota Indians in the region, the juncture of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers.  This corrects the omissions in history books and cultural memory. It informs us of the rich experience and culture of the Dakota people and their influence.  She said it's important to not only know who you are but where you are.

So where are you?  What has happened in your landscape, and what is happening now?  What has influenced your life? the life of your parents?  Your community? Opening the eyes not only corrects the distortion in the picture of reality but offers writers a richer source of material and an opportunity to engage in the world in deeper and more meaningful ways.

In my new writing, Night Train Red Dust, it has been my goal to awaken to the history of northern Minnesota, to find the stories about women, about immigrants, about laborers, about Native Americans, and to acknowledge these and bring them into my work. I've been amazed -- and have consternation about -- what I didn't know. The Iron Range and city of Duluth offers a deep and richly layered history of several cultures.

I thank these writers who have worked hard to bring stories and insights into the public discourse.  It is an effort that more of us must make as artists, writers, publishers, readers, and citizens.  We must see more clearly.

_____

To find the article by Jess Row, go to
http://www.bostonreview.net/julyaugust-2013

Prompt: First (Poetic) Love

Who is the first poet you fell in love with? In this video from The Poetry Foundation, Edward Hirsch, Evie Shockley, Jean Valentine, Juan Felipe Herrera, Katy Lederer, Marilyn Hacker, Pierre Joris and Rachel Levitsky talk about first poetry loves.

Several of the poets ask the interviewer if the question is meant literally or figuratively, or if the answer can be a poem rather than the poet. This inspired me use that first love of poetry as our prompt and inspiration.

Who is the poet that was your first love? This might be the love of a poem, but it might be a crush on the poet, either by way of a poem or just a photo on a book jacket or an encounter at a reading.

Emily, as she appears on "her" Twitter page

I had an adolescent crush on plain old Emily Dickinson because I felt sorry for her and imagined that if I had been there in Amherst that I might have been friends with her. I would have gotten her outside into nature and maybe we would have even dated.I also had a crush on glamorous Marilyn Monroe at that time because I also wanted to save her from the world.

In “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes,” Billy Collins takes that idea to a playful extreme. His poem is an extended metaphor for reading a Dickinson poem. The undressing is also the uncovering of the poems. FOr example, taking off her "tippet made of tulle” is like opening her book.

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer’s dividing water,
and slip inside.

Emily's simple poems are "a more complicated matter" when you actually read them. They are not so easy.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

Emily's habit was to wear a white dress, although she rarely left her family home in Amherst. She was a recluse for the latter part of her life, hiding behind the door when there were visitors. It is assumed that she died a virgin. You can hear Billy Collins read this poem and some of Emily's poetry online and Collins says that "There are many speculations about her...Was she lesbian? Was she celibate? Did she have an affair?" All of that speculation inspired him to write the poem in which he wanted, in a playful way, to put the guessing to rest by undressing her and having sex.

Naomi Shihab Nye

The first time I heard a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye it was her reading "Making a Fist" at a Dodge Poetry Festival. I loved the poem and I had a bit of a crush on the poet too. I bought two of her books because I wanted to read them, but also because I wanted to go up to her and ask her to sign them and say something to her.

In another video, Naomi Shihab Nye talks about how poetry inspires us. She says, "I've carried, for perhaps 30 years, a very tattered piece of notebook paper that says: Philip Levine has described the muse as 'being the portion of the self that largely lives asleep. Being inspired is really being totally alive.' He says that such a state feels a 'little odd' and also 'delicious.' " She also carries with her William Stafford's poem, "The Sky."

Despite my Emily and Naomi crushes, the poem I carry in my wallet is "When You Are Old" by William Butler Yeats. That was one I fell in love with in high school and that I memorized and that reads even better to me as I grow old and gray and full of sleep myself.

For this month's writing prompt, we write about First (Poetic) Love. This can mean the first poem you recall loving or the first poet you loved (in any sense of the word).

Submission Deadline: Wednesday, July 31st

The night I pierced my own belly button by Maria McMillan

Can’t wait to get out



of this hole of a town

she said. For years

we’d been planning

our escape. Had compiled

a list of compulsory

adventures involving

our own brilliant selves

and various disposable

sidekicks in locations

ranging from the giant

aquarium tank in

downtown Monterey

to a moonlit bridge

in Vietnam arched like a

bony cat’s back, to mountains

with names only we knew.

planchette by James Norcliffe

at night the rats
are bigger than rats

they race back and forth
like typewriters
across the lath and plaster

like good little rats
they have taken their poison
and now grow large with thirst

where are their pretty girlfriends
or love, the magician?

cannot one of these
offer them solace or slake?

oh qwerty they clatter
oh qwerty qwerty

as the night grows hard round them
desperate in their