Duluth: Jan Chronister's Poetic Visions from the Zenith City and Beyond

A BOOK REVIEW

Duluth: Zenith City & Beyond by Jan Chronister is an entertaining and thought provoking catalog of observations. You can tell right off that she's a writer, ever drawing inspiration from what's going on around her, surveying and cataloging. I'd be interested in her "writer's notebooks." 

That's what poets do. They carry a butterfly net in their heads, eyes scanning the terrain like a predator seeking prey, observations that glisten. Catch them before they flutter away, then pin them in your writers notebook. (Forgive me for mixing metaphors, but that's the way the the ball bounces after it falls off the table like a lead pencil.)

There are more than 17,000 species of butterflies in the world, and butterflies are but a subset of the Leipodptera classification of insects of which there are more than 180,000 species. Ideas for poems are something akin to this, too numerous to number, and challenging to catalog. But poets do it anyways. Some ideas are big, some small, some brilliant, some whimsical. Chronister's poems vary as well, whether humorous or serious, lively or pointed. Here's the opening stanza from the first poem in the book, titled "Urban Renewal."

In a certain year 
all the wooden stairs downtown
must have been painted
by the same man.

It sets a tone.

Many of these poems are sketches of various people she's observed--a bag boy at the grocery store, a father and son buying a Mother's Day card, a June wedding, an actress with a broken leg, a newspaper designer from Miami, a waitress at an unnamed restaurant. 

The book is divided into four sections: Town Life, Almanac, Waterways, and Roads. Almanac is a waltz through the seasons. I also liked the quotes she selected to accompany each section. A George Santayana quote leads off the Almanac section:

"To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring."

There are so many nice touches here. Like this one from a poem titled "Golden Delicious."

I see our tree

obscured with blossoms, 

courting pollinators.

Or this image from "Keeping Secrets."

I hear secrets, keep them frozen,
knowing what torrents

would flow if I thawed.

I suppose we all read poetry for different reasons. For me, it's little gems like these that make reading poetry so rewarding. (Rilke, Billy Collins and Robert Frost come readily to mind.)

Poetry can serve as many purposes as public speaking or journalism. Virgil's 9,896 lines of dactylic hexameter, The Aeneid, is an ambitious, comprehensive overview of the birth of Rome out of the ashes of Troy. Chronister's Duluth is a gathering of snapshots from this Northland territory hugging the shores of the world's largest freshwater lake.

In the midst of serious contemplation, there are often amusing pieces that can't help but make you smile. For instance, "The Summer We Bought the Farm" is about stumbling across a forty acre farm with an artesian well and a trout stream, the "inside joke" being the title, which has become a euphemism for something else.

Speaking of inside jokes, Chronister embeds numerous subtle references to things you might only be aware of if you'd lived here awhile. I suspect these make the poems especially rewarding for the locals who are paying attention.

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Jan Chronister is an award-winning regional poet whose new book was published in mid-May. A retired teacher (University level and several technical schools), Chronister is well-known in local poetry circles. 

If you don't live near a Northland bookstore, you can find Duluth: Zenith City & Beyond online, along with several other poetry collections from her six decades of enriching readers.