One of the best poets alive today — or in my opinion, the best poet alive today — is coming to St. Paul this month. I can hardly contain myself. Gary Snyder, hero to my heroes, profound poet, wanderer of the wild, mounter of mountains, meditator, dharma bum, will participate in Minnesota Public Radio’s Talking [...]
Rush
March 16, 2005
Rush I wrote a poem once about the darkness outside my headlights I tried to convey how small you feel on a country road at night How your half-sphere of light moves through the blackness at sixty miles per hour You don’t feel that way on city streets with lights and apartments You need the [...]
The birds were singing as they were known to do at that time of the morning.
February 21, 2005
The birds were singing as they were known to do at that time of the morning. The late season meant that they would do this for an ever-decreasing span of time until finally the chill of the morning merged with the chill of dusk and they would not sing at all for weeks and months. [...]
You Won’t Hear Me Complaining, Part II
January 27, 2005
Books I got at the library last night: Not So Wild a Dream, by Eric Sevareid. Sevareid was the guy who wrote Canoeing with the Cree about his and a buddy’s 2000 mile canoe trip from St. Paul to Hudson Bay in the 30s. An incredible book. This is supposed to be a great book [...]
881 reasons why i love jose saramago
December 8, 2004
On that afternoon, when the rain stopped, Cipriano Algor walked down the street to the main road, unaware that his daughter was watching him from the door of the pottery, but he did not need to say where he was going, nor did she need to ask. Stubborn creature, Marta thought, he should have gone [...]
spreading the good stuff around
December 7, 2004
my boss scott sent this to me today. from this morning’s writer’s almanac. in his words: it’s a dandy. Passengers At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seatswith the possible company of my death,this sprawling miscellany of people – carry-on bags and paperbacks – that could be gathered in a flashinto a [...]