Next Sunday Is 3rd Sunday in "Second Sunday Reading Series"

If it takes you a minute to figure out the headline, you're not alone. This coming Sunday is the third in a three-event series that began on the second Sunday of September. Organized by Duluth poet laureate Gary Boelhower, this Zoom gathering will take place November 8 from 3 to 4 p.m.

Featured readers this week will be former poet laureate Sheila Packa and Blair Powless, followed by an open reading. You can register for the event by sending an email to gboelhower@msn.com. If you are a poet who wishes to participate as a reader, submit your intentions to the same email.

Quick question to area poets. Have you been writing more poems this year of fewer? Are they darker than usual (due to the overcast mood of the country)? Or are they brighter, in an effort to lighten your spirit and relieve it from the congested heaviness of this year we wish we could have bypassed? What impact has 2020 had on your writing?

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Here's one of the many poems I wrote this year that were stimulated and stained by the unusual events of 2020.  

Writing A Self Portrait

Distancing myself from the madness.

I’m writing till I’m all wrote out.
Whatever emerges I’ll follow its flow
till sidetracked by another route
that leads me elsewhere. I won’t know
till I get there.

I’m writing till I find myself.
Whatever emerges will help me learn
something new. I’m weary of pelf
that has no purpose. What I yearn
for is fresh air.

I’m writing, half believing I’ll see
a flow of words that serves as a trail
to where mind, heart and soul agree:
a trail, one hopes, that will not be a veil
but a portrait real.

To reach mountaintops you must climb all the way
You ascend step by step, that’s the price you must pay.
If you dawdle, that battle will be your last bout;
Get going, don’t look for the easy way out.

June 2020

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The Duluth Poet Laureate Project began in 2005 and is funded by donations from The Friends of the Duluth Public Library, Lake Superior College, Lake Superior Writers, and the English departments at the College of Saint Scholastica, UMD, and by generous individuals. The Zeitgeist Community Arts Center is the fiscal sponsor. More information can be found at www.duluthpoetlaureate.org.

Special nod to Jim Perlman for his support of writers in the Northland. 

Second Sunday Reading Series Goes Zooming

Photo courtesy Gary Firstenberg

Covid-19 has thrown a monkey wrench into everything that involves gathering live and in person, from marathons to Major League Baseball. Our Duluth Toastmasters group has been meeting via Zoom and starting next weekend a Second Sunday Reading Series for poetry fans will begin.

Here's the straight dope.

The Duluth Poet Laureate Project announces the “Second Sunday Reading Series,” three online open poetry readings organized by Gary Boelhower, 2018-2020 Duluth Poet Laureate. The monthly readings will take place from 3-4 pm. on Sunday afternoon, September 13th, October 11th, and November 8th. Each month's reading will feature two local poets whose presentations will be followed by an open reading. The reading on September 13th will feature Phil Fitzpatrick and Daniel Oyinloye; October 11th will feature Deborah Cooper and John Herold; and the reading on November 8th will feature Sheila Packa and Blair Powless.

All three poetry readings will be offered through the ZOOM online video communications technology. The public is invited to view the readings through a ZOOM online portal; please register for one, two or all the programs with Gary Boelhower through email, gboelhower@msn.com. Poets who wish to participate in the open reading segment should contact Gary Boelhower with the date they wish to be placed on the program.

The Duluth Poet Laureate Project began in 2005 and is funded by donations from The Friends of the Duluth Public Library, Lake Superior College, and the English departments at the College of Saint Scholastica, UMD, and by generous individuals. The Zeitgeist Community Arts Center is the fiscal sponsor. More information can be found at www.duluthpoetlaureate.org.

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As friends and followers know, I enjoy reading and writing poetry myself, this year more than ever. This past week I have been reading Kazuo Ishiguro's heartbreakingly beautiful novel Never Let Me Go. One of the themes in the book has to do with things said and unsaid. There's a line in Charlene Groves' poem Emptiness that speak to this feature of life as regards matters of the heart and the manner in which we veil ourselves, conceal ourselves within ourselves. Charlene wrote this poem several decades past, but it could just as easily have been written during this period of Covid-19 lockdown.

Here's a poem of my own, most definitely inspired by this 2020 cultural anomaly. It's called The Mask Police.

Poets of the North Country: Introducing Jim Johnson and Ellie Schoenfeld

One of the many events I'm looking forward to during next week's Duluth Dylan Fest will be Poets of the North Country at the Underground on Wednesday, may 25. Four guest panelists will have an extended time to share in the first portion of the program followed by readings from a number of local poets including Gary Boelhower, Michelle Matthees, Julie Gard, Liz Minette, Jan Chronister, and others.

The four panelists include Duluth's first Poet Laureate Barton Sutter, Minnesota author and publisher David Pichaske, author of Song of the North Country, and the two people I'm introducing here today, Jim Johnson and Ellie Schoenfeld.

Jim Johnson is Duluth's current Poet Laureate. I asked him several questions about how he came to be interested in poetry, who have been his influences and why poetry is important. And naturally I asked about Dylan.

Jim Johnson: I became interested in poetry when I attended UMD. After college I participated in a workshop led by Sigurd Olson. I was inspired and wanted to write about plants and animals of the North Country, only I wanted to write poetry. I later wrote about the Finnish immigrant experience and about labor and political issues, especially pertaining to the people of our area. My books are titled: Finns In Minnesota Midwinter, A Field Guide To Blueberries, Wolves, The Coop Label, Dovetailed Corners, Driving Gravel Roads, The First Day Of Spring In Northern Minnesota, and Yoik. That probably gives you a list of my themes, or obsessions as I call them.

While at UMD, I listened to Bob Dylan and read Dylan Thomas. I was inspired by both, even though I don't remember which one was the first. I loved the way Dylan Thomas used words and the way Bob Dylan used ideas I had thought about. BD is a wordsmith as well, but his social concerns are very important to me. Songs like "Blowin In The Wind," "Who Killed Davy Moore," "The Walls Of Red Wing," "I Shall Be Released" have the same concern for humanity as the great poets like Whitman and Neruda. People often ask if BD is really a poet. To put him in the company of Neruda or Whitman is to say he is not only a poet but a great poet.

Feelings are important. Poetry is about feelings. Therefore poetry is important. It will continue even if the forms change.

Here's one of a pair of poems Jim submitted to me, the second was called Rutabagas.

Rock Tripes

Rock tripes are lichen, like an old couple

who depend on each other to live

out their black and white lives. Though

neither will ever admit it. He

traipsing all over the rock they live on. She

cooking up greens for eons.

But O how they liked to polka.


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For near two decades one of my favorite poets has been former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins. In a 2009 blog post I wrote of him, "There's a down-to-earth whimsical quality to a lot of his work." I share this because reading Johnson and Schoenfeld gives me that same sense of pleasure as the works of Collins who repeatedly brings an original angle to the most ordinary moments.

Of the four I'm most familiar with Ellie Schoenfeld's work, having first met her through the Poetry Harbor group when I came to Duluth three decades past and having heard her read on numerous occasions including this evening in 2014. For the longest time The Dark Honey, her award-winning book of "new and used poems," lay next to my easy chair along with a few other favorites to dip into on occasion at the end of a day. Poetry makes a nice nightcap.

Here's a typical piece that takes one to unexpected places that you might enjoy.

Patriotism
by Ellie Schoenfeld

My country is this dirt
that gathers under my fingernails
when I am in the garden.
The quiet bacteria and fungi,
all the little insects and bugs
are my compatriots. They are
idealistic, always working together
for the common good.
I kneel on the earth
and pledge my allegiance
to all the dirt of the world,
to all of that soil which grows
flowers and food
for the just and unjust alike.
The soil does not care
what we think about or who we love.
It knows our true substance,
of what we are really made.
I stand my ground on this ground,
this ground which will
ultimately
recruit us all
to its side.

"Patriotism" by Ellie Schoenfeld, from The Dark Honey. © Clover Valley Press, 2009. 
Published here without permission at the moment, but keeping my fingers crossed.

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Poets of the North Country will be a catered event that begins with an opening reception at 5:30. Readings by featured poets will start at 6:00, with an afterparty at Karpeles Manuscript Museum Library, music by Cowboy Angel Blue. Details here. The Underground Theater is located in The Depot, adjacent to the Train Museum. Note: This event is Free and open to all.

Join us.