docIn This Issue: Louise Erdrich Candace Black Edward Micus Garrison
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In This Issue: Louise Erdrich Candace Black Edward Micus Garrison
In This Issue: Candace Black Rachel Coyne Aaron Rudolph Marlene Wisuri ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Garrison Keillor Mary Winstead Mai Neng Moua and more! tragedy and comedy in the poem, “Slick, The Family Dog, Meets his Demise on Moreno Street.” He tells of the dog’s death with humorous precision, as is evident in the third stanza: “a car caught him, the bumper like a swinging foot.” In other poems, such as “Ars Poetica” and “Poem,” Rudolph satirizes himself and other poets, which reinforces the truthful, self-effacing voice of the collection. Unlike many over-written, opaque poetry collections of this century, these poems use language in a pure and understated way. After the final poem is read and the pages of the book fall closed, we find ourselves still listening. The Master Butchers Singing Club By Louise Erdrich HarperCollins, 2003 Price (Hardcover) $25.95 Reviewed by Jenny Marks ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Edward Micus John T. Shepard Diane Glancy Heid E. Erdrich I began reading Louise Erdrich’s new novel with lofty expectations to dissolve into the rich fictional dream only Erdrich can create — stories rich with language, love, and subplots thick as prairie smoke. Her other works such as Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, Tracks, and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, woven seamlessly, smudge prints in any reader’s memory. This new book, The Master Butchers Singing Club, does not disappoint, and reveals the range of Erdrich’s vision. The novel taps the author’s German heritage and begins overseas, far beyond the North Dakota reservations that are so familiar to any Erdrich fan. After serving as a sniper in the First World War, Fidelis Waldvogel returns home to Germany with a tough task. Johannes, Fidelis’s best friend, died in battle, and the news must be passed to ○ The opening poem of Sacred Things entreats us to lean forward and listen. This poem, “For Three Men Named John,” tells of a house passed through family generations: “When the boy grew to a man and raised / his own family in his grandfather’s house / he saw each of his four children / dream in the very room that held / the secrets of the old man’s life.” In the way the room was handed down through the family, so Rudolph hands his readers simple, honest truths of family and place, and most significantly, human longing. Throughout the collection, the dust of New Mexico swirls. It is an ancient place - “the land that first heard Spanish tongues in 1598.” Rudolph, however, does not use the underrepresented, Mexican-American place as a moral agenda; rather, the setting becomes an inner landscape the reader senses within the poems. Whether blatant or subtle, the Southwestern desert is the heritage of each of the poems. In “The First Rain in Three Months,” the speaker remembers the joy of rain after a drought, the way “the cracked earth darkened with wetness.” In another, “Mom Making Sopapillas”, a tender poem in which making food is an act of love, the landscape is more subtle, but the heat is evident in how the mother wipes her forehead, “the heat within her transferred to masa.” This heat flows through the entirety of the collection. Rudolph’s voice is clean and emergent, telling stories in a way we won’t forget. Childhood memories, both warm and sad, are infused with surprising humor. He juxtaposes ○ ○ ○ ○ Reviewed by Jessica Gunderson ○ ○ ○ Sacred Things By Aaron Rudolph Bridge Burner Publishing, 2002 Price (Softcover) $11.95 ○ ○ Spring 2004 Louise Erdrich Kevin Zepper Phebe Hanson Thomas Peacock Corresponder Spring 2004 Page 1 Page 2 Corresponder Spring 2004 Reviewed by Christine Stark ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country By Louise Erdrich National Geographic, 2003 Price (Hardcover) $20.00 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Johannes’ fiancé, Eva, who carries his child. When a little guilt, obligation, and a surprising love move Fidelis to marry Eva, he begins to find his place in the post-war world. After seeing a loaf of American bread, so perfect, he is inspired to take his new family to America and, with a suitcase full of first-class butcher knives and prime German sausages, he sets off for the new world. Fidelis settles in Argus, North Dakota, buys a farmstead, and opens an Old World style butcher shop, a trade learned from his father. He even begins a singing club for the men of the village. Eventually he earns enough money to bring his family overseas to join him. Meanwhile, Delphine Watzka and Cyprian Lazarre, who travel the Midwest performing a balancing act, also settle in Argus, Delphine’s hometown. Here, they find her father, Roy, a raging alcoholic, asleep in the ruins of the Watzka home. The two performers pretend to be wed and settle in a tent in the grounds at the Watzka homestead, although Cyprian’s sexual orientation prevents them from having anything more than a platonic relationship. When Roy’s reeking, closed-up cellar reveals the bodies of a missing local family, Cyprian and Delphine grudgingly agree to stay in Argus while the murder investigation begins. Heavy with the responsibility and anguish of this discovery, Delphine finds herself revealing all her worries to Eva. The women quickly befriend, and Delphine is soon hired at the butcher shop. Side by side they work, and from Eva, Delphine learns both keen business skills and town secrets. She helps care for the Waldvogel family, which has grown to include four young boys Delphine discovers her own secret, an unspeakable pull towards Fidelis, whom she cannot even look in the eye after their first meeting. “Before she met him, she sensed him, like a surge of electric power in the air when the clouds are low and lightning bounds across the earth. Then she felt a heaviness. A field of gravity moved through her body. She tried to rise, to shake the feelings, when he suddenly filled the doorway. Then entered, and filled the room.” In The Master Butchers Singing Club, Louise Erdrich’s renowned graceful use of language, tightly woven plots, and insight into the entanglements of the human heart spin this tale far into the lives of the characters. It explores the tests of family, love, loss, and loyalty — what is on the surface, as well as what is beneath. Burials, both literal and figurative, play a major part in the outcomes of these characters’ lives as they find in each other the strength to see possibility in whatever trial or pleasure life unearths. In Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, Louise Erdrich evokes an intensely personal account of her travels through Minnesota to the islands of Ontario where her Ojibwe ancestors created stone paintings “more than a thousand years ago.” The “Ojibwe people were great writers from way back” and kept “mnemonic scrolls of inscribed birchbark. The first paper, the first books.” Erdrich is obsessed with books. She has a point to her traveling, a question to answer, one that has “defined my life, the question that has saved my life, and the question that has most recently resulted in the most questionable enterprise of starting a bookstore. The question is: Books. Why?” The four chapters deal with numerous themes deftly woven together, crossing over and under one another so that it is difficult to separate the threads. Some of the main issues Erdrich delves into include the richness of the Ojibwe language, the history of Ojibwe people, writing, timelessness, age, and older motherhood. Much of the book revolves around Erdrich’s 18-month old daughter, Kiizikok, fathered by an Ojibwe spiritual leader. The baby hides a rock in her mouth from her mother, is visited by curious animals, and bears both of her grandmothers’ names. Erdrich often refers to their bond, how her responsibility as a mother overrides her occasional jealousy of the physical freedom of men. “Sometimes I look at men, at the way most of them move so freely in the world, without a baby attached, and it seems to me very strange. Sometimes it is enviable. Mostly, it is not.” Erdrich says she could even be content to simply be with her baby, “holding onto her baby’s foot. The world is calm and clear. I wish for nothing. I am not nervous about the future. Her toes curl around my fingers. I could even stop writing books.” Erdrich describes her experience while contemplating one of her ancestors’ rock paintings, which are still alive as evidenced by a white polo shirt someone left as an offering. “As I stand before the painting, I come to believe that the horned figure is a self-portrait of the artist. Books. Why? So we can talk to you even though we are dead. Here we are, the writer and I, regarding each other.” Erdrich ends her self- Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community Edited by Heid E. Erdrich and Laura Tohe Minnesota Historical Society, 2002. Price (Softcover) $13.95. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ examples, Peacock and Wisuri have given their culture a great gift. They have given the gift of remembrance. Reviewed by Gwen Griffin ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea By Diane Glancy The Overlook Press, 2003. Price (Hardcover) $21.95. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ In a time of reality television and the insurmountable popularity of video games, a book full of learning and activities seems almost obsolete. The Good Path is anything but obsolete. Peacock and Wisuri have given their culture a great gift with The Good Path. The book is a history of the Ojibwe people that retells legends and the history of the culture. One such legend is that of “Grandmother Moon,” the first woman; the story is retold with the effect that children will learn to honor women. Not only legends are told in this book, another chapter describes the westward migration of the Ojibwe people. Each chapter honors a different figure or idea. With chapter headings such as “Honor the Creator,” “Be Peaceful,” and “Be Kind to Everyone,” every aspect of the Ojibwe life is covered. A child does not have to be of the Ojibwe culture to read this book and enjoy it. This book is full of activities that are created with the idea that by doing these activities, children will discover their family’s history. Activities have children interview elders, use resources to discover methods of currency, and research other cultures and compare their culture with another. Peacock and Wisuri’s purpose in writing this book is to make “the story go on forever.” Through the telling of legends and historical ○ ○ Reviewed by Gwen Fouberg ○ ○ The Good Path: Ojibwe Learning and Activity Book for Kids. By Thomas Peacock and Marlene Wisuri Afton Historical Society Press, Minnesota, 2002 Price (Softcover) $17.95 ○ ○ ○ ○ portrait at her bookstore, Birchbark, in Minneapolis. The store is “just off Lake of the Isles...that’s it — the whole thing about islands and books. There really are two islands on Lake of the Isles and they are both wild islands.” She has seen “great horned owls, black-crowned night-herons, arctic tern, dozens of black or painted turtles swirling off logs, and once a bald eagle.” Thankfully, Erdrich has found a way to keep hold of her baby’s foot while talking with us through her writing and bookstore. Louise Erdrich is an award-winning author. She lives in Minneapolis and owns Birchbark Books, near Lake of the Isles. If you are looking for something different in the realm of Native American literature — beyond what we affectionately call the “Fab Five” (Momaday, Silko, Welch, Erdrich, and Alexie) — then today’s Native women writers have produced a wealth of works that you can enjoy. Editors Heid Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibway) and Laura Tohe (Navajo) have brought together an anthology of prose and poetry that celebrates the rich diversity of writing by contemporary Native American women. The essays, poems, and stories from across the nations celebrate, record, and explore the significance of community in the lives of Native women. Established writers, including Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, Diane Glancy, LeAnne Howe, Roberta Hill, Kim Blaeser, join with a host of emerging voices to explore what it means to be a woman and how those realities are enriched by the Native American experience The works range from the personal to the political, from notions of romantic love to the realities of marriage, from finding a place in modern society to incorporating tradition in daily life. Whether it’s Erdrich’s tragic story “The Shawl,” Glancy’s reflections on the speeches of great chiefs, or Esther Belin’s beautiful poem “First Woman,” these pieces weave a rich and heartfelt tapestry of the fibers we share as women. Sister Nations is organized into four sections: “Changing Women” focuses on the stages of a woman’s life, awareness of female ancestors, and women’s traditions of healing and making art; the selections in “Strong Hearts” show Indian Corresponder Spring 2004 Page 3 Page 4 Corresponder Spring 2004 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ The plot of the new novel Love Me by Garrison Keillor, host of A Prairie Home Companion and creator of the fictional prairie space Lake Wobegon, is distinctly cosmopolitan and literary: a writer, Larry Wyler — the narrator of the novel — meets a pretty blonde Minnesota girl in a choir while attending the U of M, marries her, fails at becoming a writer for many years, has a huge score with a novel that in- ○ ○ ○ Reviewed by Nick Larocca ○ ○ ○ Love Me By Garrison Keillor Viking, 2003 Price (Hardcover) $24.95 ○ ○ ○ ○ women enduring with love, defending with fierce judgment, and reaching out across history to protect the people; “New Age Pocahontas” reveals the humor and complexity of stereotypes and simplified images of Native American women; and “In the Arms of the Skies” explores the ways in which typical notions about romantic love and marriage are tested. All in all, Susan Power said it best: “Sister Nations is a powerful and provocative journey that ends at a kitchen table where women gather to laugh, commiserate, and speak the truth.” Always on the edge with an experimental technique, Glancy presents a different spin to the often-repeated story of Sacajawea and her experiences on the expedition of Meriweather Lewis and William Clark. Presented in parallel narratives, Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea portrays the strength of a Shoshoni woman in the face of difficult conditions — extreme cold, illness, rough terrain, and rough treatment—as she struggles to return with her child to her people. Glancy places Sacajawea’s thoughts and observations on the page in a second-person point of view as if we are listening in: “Lewis and Clark camp at a fork in the river they call Decision Point because they can’t decide which way to take. The men say the north fork; Lewis and Clark say the south. You do not know which way they should take” (42). On the right side of the text are sidebars with actual corresponding entries from the journals of Lewis and Clark. It’s an interesting juxtaposition that combines moving fiction and history that has taken on legendary status. Both books provide another path to recent works of Native literature through the guidance of some brilliant Native women, historical and contemporary. cludes deviousness and darkness (meaty qualities Keillor often neglects), and moves to New York, sans his wife Iris, to write for The New Yorker and be literary. He develops writer’s block of such depth that he never publishes a piece in the magazine — though he does have one bought by the editor, Wallace Shawn, as a pity purchase. His second novel flops. He cannot conceive a third. When all is dark and dreary, along comes an offer from the largest newspaper in Minnesota. He is asked to write an advice column. The irony of the offer —an advice column to be written by a man estranged from his wife, carrying on affairs two thousand miles away from his home in the largest city in the country — is not lost on Keillor or on Wyler. But the job suits him, and the advice he dispenses as the advisor “Mr. Blue” is certainly more idiosyncratic, humorous, honest, and intelligent than the doophus-splooge of Abby or her sister. Missing from the book are the Wobegon settings and characters Keillor has made famous. But Keillor does a fine job of imbuing the novel with eccentric personalities, particularly the secondary characters, including a failed and terrible poet, a New York mafioso who, it turns out, is the publisher of The New Yorker, and assorted women who inch Wyler closer and closer to an inevitable reunion with his wife and reasonableness. The book not only includes Keillor’s signature eccentric secondary characters, but his signature wry, self-effacing, quick humor. Wyler is not a morally righteous human being, nor does he claim to be. But what makes him likeable, if a bit frustrating and at times boring, is his sense of humor about himself, his continuous apologies for his bad behavior, and, most importantly, his unquestionable love for Iris, despite the mess he has chosen to make out of their marriage. It is the love story that provides the book meaning of lasting significance. While no one would ever argue that Keillor writes with the depth of Munro or Franzen, it is true that scenes between Larry and Iris are not only realistic and well paced, but at times bittersweet, revealing a kind of emotional lonesomeness Keillor’s human voice often betrays on the radio but which rarely makes it into his writing. The result is intoxicating. Make no mistake: this is not a great novel. But while other novels of Keillor’s have been good, creative pieces, this novel rises a bit above what he’s already done. It suggests Keillor may yet invest his heart into his creativity. In the meantime, Love Me, full of strange advice, is certainly a fine read. Landing Zones By Edward Micus New Rivers Press, 2003 Price (Softcover) $14.95 Reviewed by Nicole Lea Helget ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ hopeful can the human character be? Infinitely so, it seems. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t flourish as we do, let alone survive. All of us, of course, don’t survive. I’m sure there are Hmong writers who don’t write about the conflicts in Hmong culture or conflicts with the dominant American culture. There have to be. And if there aren’t now, there will be someday. None of the writers in this book has chosen to step away, though. Writers are like that; they go where the pain is because that’s where the growth is. And that’s where the good stories are. ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Astonishment #2: Forget the challenge of reaching fluency in a new language — especially one as difficult as English. Consider the courage it takes to tell people who “risked everything to ensure [your] well being in America” things it hurts them to hear. Do some peoples have to destroy their culture in order to allow it to survive in a new country? That’s how some of them — particularly the ones who suffered to bring the rest along — are going to feel. Astonishment to Infinity: How smart and brave and resourceful and adaptable and fearlessly self-analytical and loving and forgiving and ever- ○ ○ ○ When will we allow our mothers, wives, sisters, and aunts to sit among us at the clan-gathering dinner table? And when will we stop selling our daughters in marriage at such a steep bride price to exhibit the social status of the clan. What Hmong organization will stand up to make a pledge to look for ways to help control the population explosion within our community? Which clan leader will no longer force a fourteen-year-old to marry her rapist in order to save the family from disgrace? When will we find just one precious moment late at night to open our eyes to these issues and then sigh deeply before going to sleep? ○ ○ ○ A person should probably have a broader range of responses to such a book than to be astonished at the awful weight immigrants bear. This is an instance, however, where power of subject so overwhelms concern for presentation of subject — “the writing” — that I’m reluctant to spend a sentence on anything else. Their lives is what they give us in poetry, exposition, nonfiction narrative, drama and myth. There’s probably fiction here, but nothing feels as “manipulated” as fiction often feels, which is not a negative judgement. The stuff is “made”; it’s not natural — that’s why we call it art. Astonishment #1: how does a person evolve from speaking no English to speaking this articulately in less than a third of a lifetime? This is Bee Cha, an architect in Madison, Wisconsin. ○ ○ ○ Reviewed by Terry Davis ○ ○ ○ Bamboo Among The Oaks: Contemporary Writing by Hmong Americans Edited by Mai Neng Moua Price (Softcover) $13.95 An awful beauty exists in war, prostitution, and infanticide, and just to see it requires a wise eye, but to present it as lovingly as Edward Micus has in Landing Zones, requires an ear for language and a hand for writing, a scent for humanity and an intuition for whatever it is that marries these things into story. The book, Micus’ first collection of short stories, is a candidate for a Minnesota Book Award in the categories of Fiction and New Voices. It bounds from war-time Vietnam to a gambling casino to a Catholic school childhood to an out of place narrator in a beauty salon that confounds him. It winds through nurture — a sister preparing her brother’s casket, an Australian prostitute comforting a soldier on leave; and nature — a birth in a driving snowstorm, the smells of rain and freshly cut pea fields, the steam of a jungle. As eclectic of a collection as that may seem, Micus never neglects the truth of these characters and settings. His words paint the prettiest pictures, vivid and unforgettable. Micus’ characters notice things, like eyes—and not just the blue, brown, or green of them. Descriptions of them romance language “Her eyes were burnt a deep blue and they seemed older than the rest of her” (from “Dying Over Here”) and, “Wherever it is blue and gray meet, on the edge of a daystorm, say, that was the color of his eyes” (from “These Soldiers”). It is the focus and precision of choosing the right words in the right order for the right details that make the reading such a lesson in language and a subtle and unpretentious celebration of words. Corresponder Spring 2004 Page 5 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Reviewed by Tara Moghadam ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ The Volunteer By Candace Black New Rivers Press, 2003 Price (Softcover) 13.95 Reading The Volunteer is like opening your heart to the intimate stories of a new friend: you cannot walk away from the experience without feeling as if you’ve been given a gift. A winner of the Many Voices Project, the poems in this book are utterly personal, leaving us with the sense that we have fallen into the life of a woman who has been fully engaged in the world. Spanning the arc of a lifetime, Black’s poetry is relational in the best of ways. Her poems, often dedicated to or written specifically for a person, anchor us into a world which is rich in its intimacy and offering. We witness the growth of children and of friendships, the deepening of bonds, and Black’s refusal to look away from the more difficult, uncomfortable moments that mark our lives. In her poem “Track Meets,” ○ Micus proves writing is a craft, an art, by chiseling expertly sculpted stories. An excerpt from “A Little Off The Top” where the narrator, in a frenzy, propositions his newfound hair stylist for a dinner date proves the point: “Now here’s the thing. The shop was in a zoo stage. All four stations were busy, several people were waiting in the waiting chairs, including another blue-haired girl, and one of the other blue-smocked women was shouting, ‘Maggie, I can’t find the apple perms.’ I mean, she may have preferred not to have dinner with me at all. But a yes was the easiest way — she told me this later — the quickest way, things being as hectic as they were. And if the phone hadn’t begun ringing at that very moment, I might have never come to love her all the rest of my life.” The publisher puts Landing Zones in the genres of Vietnam and Men’s Studies — too limiting a placement for this collection. Micus’ feel for the human condition goes beyond the tangibility of his own experiences as a man and a Vietnam veteran. He taps an instinct for all humans, whatever their station. This book is as much about the very marrow of life as it is about men and Vietnam. A SHORT INTERVIEW WITH EDWARD MICUS Tell us about your motivation to write. Why do you put words to the page? My mother, Ruth, who is 93 and lives in Iowa provides as much motivation, I suppose, as anyone. When I was very young she gave me a precious gift-her love of language. I still hear her voice when I write — I also feel the tremendous compassion she has for human beings. And for almost twenty years, teachers and writers like Rick Robbins and Terry Davis and Roger Sheffer have provided wonderful encouragement. I find it curious how writers come to this passion for writing. Also, a part of me thinks writers, like many artists, try to make the world right What’s your criteria for selecting material? Can you tell us about the process of moving an idea into a full-fledged story, why some ideas make it and some don’t? In either genre, poetry or fiction, I suppose I write intuitively. An idea for a story or the start of a poem, perhaps, may feel right. Sometimes a simple image or a scrap of language might initiate things. As far as process is concerned, I rarely know where a poem or a short story is headed. I like to think, and this may sound strange, that music and language move the piece along What do you demand of yourself in terms of your language when you write prose? Language is vital to me. I try to be at least pseudo-literary — not saying that all short stories or novels should have literary in mind. Language should be fresh and well crafted. And musical. Because language is what we are, I try not to let these elements slide. My young writing friends get tired of me yipyip-yipping about craft and language — they can be so keen with story — I just hate to see a wonderful story suffer for lack of language. What do you think about Landing Zones being nominated for two categories of The Minnesota Book Awards — Fiction and New Voices? I was surprised, to say the least. But pleased Page 6 Corresponder Spring 2004 Why Still Dance: 75 Years: 75 Poems. Phebe Hanson, Nodin Press, 2003. Price (Softcover) $17.00 Reviewed by Emilio DeGrazia ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ father was a cop who wore “big, black, magnificent boots” and “no one in their right gourd would mess with a man wearing boots like that.” The narrator grows into his own boots, and in the process, appreciates his father even more. Wisdom, man, wisdom. Zepper flirts with sentimentality but never crosses the line. What happens is endearment. Readers are drawn in by the lack of pretension in the voice. On top of a thrift store book shelf lurks an old health-class text the narrator of the poem “Health Book” used when he was an adolescent. Running into it was one-of-those-things, and, low and behold, a previous owner of the book was an ex-homecoming queen the narrator had a thing for, and, “after 20 years [the narrator] was still somewhat titillated” simply by seeing her signature on the backside of the cover. The narrator pages through and finds his initials “sketched on one of the pages” and considers the possibility that the ex-homecoming queen, as opposed to the other students who had owned the book, was the one who sketched his initials, and of course, the sketching had to have been done during one of the class lectures about “ovaries, ovum, erections, sperm and love.” The longing in the poem is indicative of the book’s masculine sentimentality and wisdom. It’s voicedriven, entertaining, and totally unpretentious. The narrator wonders if maybe he wasn’t in the ex-homecoming queen’s thoughts “for a few scant minutes.” The Fifth Ramone is a riot. Don’t let the fact the word “chapbook” discourage you. Kevin Zepper will publish again. And when he does, you’ll be able to say, “Oh yeah, I was a Kevin Zepper fan before it was even cool to be a Kevin Zepper fan.” Rock on! ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Want to talk voice, well, Kevin Zepper’s got it. His chapbook The Fifth Ramone is true to its title, it simply rocks. Voice drives this book like a guitar. And, look out poetry die-hards, it’s a book of prose poems! But don’t worry, there’s music in the paragraphs and a firm command of language. More importantly, there’s honesty. The book rocks due to its lack of “bloated solos,” no pretension, instead, humor and wisdom. The first time through, Zepper’s masculine sentimentality and true love of poetry make The Fifth Ramone enjoyable. The fun you’ll have while reading will make you want to open the book again. The title poem, “The Fifth Ramone,” opens with the speaker disregarding the Stones, Doors, Kinks, and Beatles because the speaker of this poem yearns to be in The Ramones, the fifth member of the band, a background guy, yet “always there” and “rockin’ hard.” The narrator wants to “keep the power cummin’ through the Marshall stacks,” does not want any “long — winded whining — Hendrix-come — Beck-come —Clapton” solos. The poem comments on, in Zepper’s words, the “goofy, totally comic-book” nature of rock-n-roll. Like a two-minute Ramones’ song, the voice of this poem zings readers down the page in total “Hey Ho, Let’s Go!” fashion. The humor is evident as well as the lack of pretension. Entertaining as hell. If poetic honesty is what you’re after, look no further than “Big Mother Boots.” The narrator’s ○ ○ ○ Reviewed by Derek Tellier ○ ○ ○ The Fifth Ramone By Kevin Zepper Dacotah Territory, 2003 Price (Chapbook) $4.00 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ dedicated for the distance mothers in us all, Black reminds us how “At this stage everything’s metaphor: each step/ increases the distance while we’re reduced/ to watching from the bleachers.” Black’s insightfulness is reflected in the precision of the details which permeate her work. In “The Lap Swimmer” she writes “What surrounded her/ felt solid, her hands shovels/ to move aside so many/ fathoms of light.” These poems are steeped in both life and craft. Never are we left to flail in the ephemeral. Inside The Volunteer the world is solid and real; as are those who people its pages — all the result of a refined, attentive and caring writer, a writer capable of being a voice for us all. In Why Still Dance: 75 Years: 75 Poems, Phebe Hanson captures moments from a singularly well-lived life. She was raised in tiny Sacred Heart, Minnesota, where the cursed blessing of being daughter of a Lutheran minister provided ample material for confusion, embarrassment, and bitter-sweet love. Her subject matter can be audacious — “When Dad Corresponder Spring 2004 Page 7 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Dry histories and piles of newspaper articles might explain the who, what, where, and why of a city, but they cannot express how it is to live in a place, walk its streets, inhale its odors, and observe its beauty, despite a few scars. Only literature can do that. Twelve Branches: Stories from St. Paul is an ○ ○ ○ Reviewed by Nick Healy ○ ○ ○ Twelve Branches: Stories From St. Paul By Nora Murphy, Joanna Rawson, Julia Klatt Singer, and Diego Vasquez, Jr. Coffee House Press, 2003 Price (Softcover) $10.00 ○ ○ ○ ○ Had Lumbago,” “Why She Picks at Her Cuticles,” “Eating a Mango over the Kitchen Sink” — but Hanson has revealed the numinous quality in such events, repeatedly bringing us to that moment of frisson when the ordinary becomes extraordinary: We see, for example, what a father mowing the grass shares with a shower of stars shooting across the sky. In a few of the poems — ”Chameleon” and “Garden Dream” — she abandons us into the unusual and strange, trusting that the poems will stir us to discovery of the unknowns in ourselves. For the most part, however, these poems render the ordinary accessible, skirting sentimentality and sheer dullness with well-chosen images. The difficulties we find in much contemporary poetry — the obscurity rooted in the poet’s indifference to his readers, the startling twists of metaphor that often blur the line between brilliance and vagueness—are not to be found here. Hanson’s poems are written in a language we can all understand, about people, places, things, and emotions visible on a plainly marked Minnesota landscape. Considered as a whole (call it holistic, even holy in its pure sensuousness) this collection leaves us with the impression that its dancer has lived a quick, generous, imaginative, intelligent, and very full life. Those who have been active on the Minnesota poetry scene understand well what an inspiring presence and force Phebe Hanson has been over the decades as poet, teacher and citizen. And we’re pleased though not surprised to know that at 75 she’s still dancing. From this volume we learn why we matter too, especially when we pay attention to what’s vital in the ordinary moments, so much like hers, glancing away from us. Page 8 Corresponder Spring 2004 ambitious effort to reflect life in one city through a series of stories born in the real-life tales of citizens and woven into new and distinct pieces of short fiction. Four Twin Cities writers — Nora Murphy, Joanna Rawson, Julia Klatt Singer, and Diego Vasquez, Jr. — teamed to create the collection, which was sponsored by the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library to celebrate the 2003 reopening of the Central Library after major renovations. The library group developed the concept of a “chain-written” book, recruited the writers, and dispatched them to each of the city’s twelve branch libraries to meet with community members and to listen to their stories of life in St. Paul. After meeting hundreds of people and hearing many memorable anecdotes, the writers went to work at crafting twelve stories building on what they had heard while creating characters who are fresh and vital. The collection includes three stories from each of the writers, and when considered as a whole, they reflect not only St. Paul’s wonders and failures but its many contradictions. In these stories, St. Paul is a city of distinct and sometimes parochial neighborhoods, yet somehow the place has a unified spirit. It is a city of immigrants, and it is a city of people who have been there forever and who all seem to have known each other since grade school. And though it often seems its glory days have come and gone, St. Paul is optimistic. Among the highlights of the collection is Vasquez’s “The First Time I Saw St. Paul,” which uses the real-life tragedy of a gas-line explosion in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood to launch a retelling of a Latino man’s arrival in St. Paul. Vasquez describes the city through the eyes of a boy whose mother has fled an abusive lover in Chicago and is desperate for a safe place to settle. Nora Murphy’s story “The Butterfly Garden” describes life on the other side of town, in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood. Murphy tells of a single woman and her daughter who stumble onto long-hidden evidence of a lost love, and their story captures the affection and the heartache between neighbors whose lives intertwine for generations. In the end, Twelve Branches succeeds because of the quality of the stories. They do not seem like stiff parts of a gimmicky memento conjured by a library committee. Rather, each story brings to life imaginary characters who somehow embody life in a real place, a city worth knowing. Inside the Mayo Clinic: A Memoir John T. Shepherd, M.D. Afton Historical Society Press, 2003 Price (Hardcover) $28.00 Reviewed by Colleen Godfrey ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ mysteries are exposed. Questions are not answered, and answers emerge to unasked questions. The circumstances of Tea’s death are never revealed. Unexpected characters are suddenly linked to the family. Kat’s apathetic observations provide a contrast to other characters’ startling, dysfunctional behavior, and further illustrates the psychological damages of a family fueled by alcohol and drained by deceit, death and promiscuity. Inside the Mayo Clinic: A Memoir details the life of a cardiovascular scientist, educator and administrator whose fifty-year career at Mayo led to countless collaborative efforts. In 1965, John Shepard joined NASA’s Life Science Advisory Committee and contributed to the safety of human space travel. In the Eighties, he met with scientists in the Soviet Union “to discuss diseases of the heart and circulation.” Shepherd’s career at Mayo led him into friendship with Walter Mondale — author of the book’s foreword — and into meetings with members of royalty, American philanthropists, and business tycoons. While John Shepherd’s life is notable, and his tenure at Mayo Clinic remarkable, his literary voice is strongest during the first few chapters where he tells of life in Ireland as the son and grandson of Presbyterian ministers, and recounts the early years of his medical training and practice in Belfast. In its early pages, Shepherd’s memoir is a timeless blend of formality and candor. While attending medical school in his native Northern Ireland, Shepherd’s professor urged him to become a surgeon. “... But if I choose to follow his advice, I should avoid involvement with the opposite sex. In his customary straightforward terms, and in the masculine behavior of the time, he counseled me to consider what a woman looks like at 3:00 A.M. sitting on a chamber pot with her hair down. He told me that to succeed during the long training program to become a surgeon, I should keep my balls in ice for the next five years.” Here Shepard is reflective, opinionated, and witty. As the book progresses, his engaging ○ Rachel Coyne’s first adult novel, Whiskey Love, is a psychological depiction of a family burdened by guilt and hatred, yet connected by love and history. The novel opens with the narrator as a child, bundled into the backseat of a car while her mother drives the streets of a small Minnesota town looking for her husband. She finds him in another woman’s bed, drunk on whiskey, stumbling and belligerent. In this scene Coyne defines “whiskey love” and sets the stage for the rest of the novel and its twisted and veracious familial relationships. In the second chapter the narrator, Kat, is an adult returning to Minnesota after an absence of many years. Determined to uncover the truth of her cousin Tea’s death, Kat drives sleepless from Louisiana to Minnesota, parks her car in the cornfield where she first met, and last saw, Tea, and walks the rest of the way to her childhood home. There, she peels away layers of Tea’s life until she discovers the core of her cousin’s character. Tea was a woman visually haunted by her artistic nature, fulfilled by lust and incestuous relationships, and destined to die from her own addictions. But adoration for Tea has veiled Kat’s perceptions, and she rejects the truths she finds. Through the history of Tea, Coyne develops the brittle relationships of other family members, each destroyed by religion, drink, or denial. Not one character is simply defined. Abra, Kat’s older sister, devastated as a teenager by the death of her fatherless baby, has rebuffed the family and turned to the Bible and the congregation of a fundamental country church. Rather than discovering love, she discovers hate, which is evident in the violence she displays toward her recently returned sister. Another sister, Pearl, ravaged by drink, alternately neglects and fawns over her three-year-old son. The brothers, Mason and Taylor, are outwardly self-sufficient and controlled, but have inner manifestations of the abuse they suffered as children. In her niece, Jordan, Kat finds an echo of her own worship of Tea. But even Jordan, a fierce and headstrong teenager, is already on a predestined path to destruction. Coyne topples the reader’s expectations throughout the novel. As truths unfold, more ○ ○ ○ Review by Jessica Gunderson ○ ○ ○ Whiskey Love By Rachel Coyne Ruminator Books, 2003 Corresponder Spring 2004 Page 9 ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Minneapolis native, Mary Winstead, began writing Back to Mississippi as an attempt to record her father’s stories of growing up poor in rural Mississippi. In an effort to create an atmospheric background to his stories, she delved into his family’s history, and through the course of her research uncovered information regarding a cousin’s association with the Ku Klux Klan. Not caring to speak of the cousin’s Klan activities, aunts and uncles refused to answer any questions regarding race relations or Klan associations and threatened to ostracize her if she continued with her book-writing venture. They accused her of wanting to humiliate and shame them. “‘They bury everything,’” said her father. “‘You want to unearth it. It’s breaking a big rule.’” Despite her family’s opposition, Winstead persevered and wrote a beautiful historical memoir rich in personal and social significance. During the summer of 1964, known as Freedom Summer, college students from all regions of the U.S. were recruited to assist Blacks with voter registration in the state of Mississippi. Although the federal government had granted Black Americans voting rights, Mississippi authorities under the Klan’s control, used intimidation tactics to prevent them from exercising their rights. During Freedom Summer, college students Mickey Schwerner, Andrew E. Goodman, and James Chaney drove to Neshoba County, Mississippi to help with Black voter ○ ○ ○ Reviewed by Deborah Selbach ○ ○ ○ Back to Mississippi: A Personal Journey Through the Events that Changed America in 1964 By Mary Winstead Hyperion, 2002 Price (Hardcover) $22.95 ○ ○ ○ ○ narrative voice seems to undergo the kind of sterilization that keeps a tight-lipped public relations department happy; what remains resembles a carefully crafted bragging sheet. Despite its final encyclopedic tone, I recommend Inside the Mayo Clinic to anyone interested in the evolution of the Mayo Clinic, from its grass-roots beginning to its current status as one of the world’s most prominent medical institution, and to anyone interested in one man’s ambitious contributions to major scientific advancement. Page 10 Corresponder Spring 2004 registration. Upon their arrival, county sheriff and Klansman, Cecil Price, arrested the young men for speeding, then detained them in jail for several hours before releasing and following them out of town. A car filled with Klansmen ambushed the students’ car, plucked them out and execute them one-by-one — Schwerner first, then Goodman and Chaney — all at point-blank range. A Klansman with a backhoe dug a large, deep hole below an earthen dam, threw the bodies in, and covered them with twenty feet of dirt. The FBI found their bodies forty-five days later, on a hot summer day. Winstead writes, “Greenish blue blowflies swarmed in the pit where the shovel was digging, and buzzards had begun to circle overhead…The stench was overpowering; the heat brutal. Several of the agents crawled from the pit and vomited.” In her research, Winstead learned her father’s cousin through marriage, preacher Edgar Ray Killen, had made the arrangements for the murders: gathered guns and ammunition, gassed up cars, and planned for the backhoe to be placed at the earthen dam burial site. She also learned Killen had coordinated Neshoba County’s “reign of terror” from the spring of 1964 to the winter of 1967, controlling city government officials, police, church leaders, the press, and business owners through intimidation. White residents feared speaking out against Killen and the Klan because they’d witnessed “businesses…ruined, people…killed.” When Winstead asked her aunts and uncles questions regarding Killen’s Klan activities, they justified their cousin’s actions. They didn’t want to think or talk about the summer of 1964. They saw themselves as good, blameless people. What makes Back to Mississippi wonderful reading (and it is wonderful reading) are the parallels drawn between the author’s life, the lives of the three slain civil rights workers, and the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. While Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were living and dying for the cause of civil rights, Mary was age eleven and concerned only with her many pre-pubescent problems, begging Saint Jude to make her brown eyes blue, her dark complexion light, and her large nose small, while the Ku Klux Klan prayed for God’s blessing in slaughtering innocents, and Black Americans asked God for an end to their struggle. The author’s juxtaposition of events within the structure of her memoir makes it easy to see the irony, and difficult to stop reading. Her wonderful writing makes it impossible. Changemaker By W. Harry Davis and Edited By Lori Sturdevant Afton Society Historical Press, 2003 Price (Softcover) $17.95 Reviewed by Anne O’Meara In 2002, Harry Davis and Lori Sturdevant collaborated on Overcoming: the Autobiography of W. Harry Davis. Changemaker, their latest collaboration, is a recasting of that information for a student audience. This version is not a simplification of the original information. It is information put to a different purpose: to help students think of themselves as changemakers and to help them adopt confidence and ways of thinking that will lead to that end. Changemaker is the kind of young adult book that respects its readers and motivates them by providing realistic, interesting, and complex information. Changemaker includes 17 chapters, each focused around some part of Davis’ life from his early years in north Minneapolis and his experience with the Phyllis Wheatley house to his later work with the Minneapolis NAACP, on the city’s Board of Education, and as a candidate for mayor against Charlie Stenvig in 1971. In writing for a younger audience, Davis assumes what could be called his coaching voice; he’s explaining how the game works. He provides more detail about the interpersonal and political dimensions of making changes and preventing widespread violence in Minneapolis during the 1960s. He provides ample evidence of conflict among people who shared ideals. And he demonstrates how important it is for changemakers to be able trust each other, to do their homework, and to reach out to meet others. There is not a whiff of preaching here, but students can see the players, the strategies, and the results of difficult but cooperative ventures to provide better jobs, housing, education, and safety for all citizens. Each chapter ends with a suggestion for personal writing in a Changemaker journal. These suggestions call for readers to think about necessary skills and issues in the context of their own lives. For instance at the end of the Coaching chapter, students are asked to write about lessons a special adult in their lives has taught them, by word and example, about how to be influential with others. A second follow-up section to chapters suggests class projects. The suggestion following the Campaigning chapter calls for students to identify three or four changemakers in the city today and to write to them about a policy change they are currently trying to make and the strategies and personal skills they are employing to try to make it happen. There are numerous pictures and specific references to Minneapolis places and political figures, which add local interest. Each chapter can stand alone, so that teachers could use them in many different contexts. But the overall picture which emerges is one of a city blessed with a diverse array of citizens who repeatedly made improvements by pooling their energy, vision, and varying viewpoints. The book is an important contribution to future (as well as current) changemakers in an era of divisive political invective and constrained solutions. Corresponder Spring 2004 Page 11 ○ ○ Judy Blunt (Non-Fiction) December 2, 2004 A member of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System. ○ ○ ○ Pam Houston (Fiction and Non-Fiction) ○ ○ March 3, 2005 ○ ○ ○ April 5-8, 2005 S.L. Wisenberg (Fiction and Non-Fiction) April 28, 2005 Jane Jeong Trenka (Non-Fiction) Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Poetry) ○ Wang Ping (Poetry, Fiction and Non-Fiction) Tony Hoagland (Poetry) ○ The Corresponder is edited by Tara Moghadam. The editor would like to thank Richard Robbins, faculty advisor and program director of the Good Thunder Reading Series; and all the reviewers. February 10, 2005 ○ November 4, 2004 ○ Robert Hedin (Poetry) ○ ○ October 15, 2004 ROBERT WRIGHT CONFERENCE ○ ○ Nancy Eimers (Poetry) William Olsen (Poetry) ○ Now On-line at: www.english.mnsu.edu/cwpubs/ corresponder.htm September 23, 2004 ○ Or E-mail inquiries to: [email protected] 2004-2005 Schedule: ○ The Corresponder Department of English Minnesota State University, Mankato 230 Armstrong Hall Mankato, MN 56001 UPCOMING GOOD THUNDER READING SERIES EVENTS ○ NEWS AND NOTES The Corresponder is a biannual publication that features Minnesota writers. Direct all correspondence and review copies to: ○ *210011* The Corresponder Department of English Minnesota State University, Mankato 230 Armstrong Hall Mankato, MN 56001 The Corresponder MSU is an Affirmative Action/ Equal Opportunity University. A Fan Letter on Minnesota Writers This document is available in alternative format to individuals with disabilities by calling the Department of English at 507-389-2117 (V), 800-627-3529 or 711 (MRS/TTY). Are you a local author or publishing company in Minnesota with a recent work for review? For review consideration in an upcoming issue of The Corresponder, please send your book, along with a short biographical sketch to: The Corresponder Department of English Minnesota State University, Mankato 230 Armstrong Hall Mankato, MN 56001 Page 12 Corresponder Spring 2004
