2016 Duluth Dylan Fest Day 5 -- Blood on the Track Express

Poets of the North Country @ The Underground

It's been a great week of Dylan-inspired music, art, poetry and activities here during Duluth Dylan Fest 2016. Tonight is another event for the highlight reels, the Blood on the Tracks Express, from Duluth to Two Harbors and back. Here's a Throwback Thursday peek into what the ride is about.... music, friends, dancing and music. This is one of the most memorable and talked about events each year during Dylan Fest, no matter what the weather.

VERY IMPORTANT REMINDER: The train will board at the Depot this year. Do not stand in line in the rain behind Fitgers.

HERE'S ANOTHER TIP: There is an opening reception at the Duluth Art Institute for Naomi Christenson's exhibition Pattern Conspiracy from 5 - 7 p.m.  Of course if you stay too long you will miss the train. Don't worry though, it takes a little time to board 300 people. The DAI reception is free and looks to be an exceptionally interesting show. Here's Naomi's statement about her work:

Woven into the fabric of reality is pattern. It’s written in our DNA … in fact our DNA is delicate, undulating pattern of information, an amazing combination of form and function. Everywhere you look, whether through a microscope or a telescope, there's pattern. Conspiracy? Maybe. You see it, feel it and live it every day. Pattern gives poetry it’s meter, music it’s rhythm. It dazzles our eyes and moves our hearts. My obsession with this conspiracy leads me to respond in kind, celebrating the patterns I love most and allowing that celebration to move through me and into new expressions of pattern. In the process of observing and creating, I'm able to explore the conspirators and see the beautiful connections we all share.

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Current Duluth Poet Laureate Jim Johnson

Last night's Poets of the North Country event at the Underground was well attended and much enjoyed. Our featured readers were Barton Sutter, Ellie Schoenfeld, Jim Johnson and David Pichaske, each of whom spoke for twenty minutes. Each had stories to share and read from their work. After a short intermission local poets shared briefly, most being the familiar to us who follow this region's rich poetry scene, though as Bart noted beforehand it was not always so. He shared how in the early 80's he and Louis Jenkins would meet somewhere to share their work with one another. How diverse and broad the Northland poetry landscape has become.

The local poets who shared were Gary Boelhower, Jan Chronister, Don Dass, Steve Downing, Phil Fitzpatrick, Julie Gard, Michelle Mathees, Liz Minette, Nicholas Nelson, and myself. Master of Ceremonies Jeffrey Woolverton, who graciously organized the event, closed the evening with a reading of his own.

Phil Fitzpatrick is always a favorite of mine.

The colorful setting made a visually interesting environment. The Playhouse has been performing Chris Monroe's Some Sneaky Sheep and Other Tales. Anyone who knows Chris Monroe's picture books knows that this has been a fun week of shows here in The Underground.

I took lots of notes and there were many great moments, some that made us laugh out loud and some, like Boelhower's "Listen to the Canary" and Nelson's "I Don't Have a Definition," that made us reflective. As time permits I hope to gather a few more thoughts related to this event.

Big thank you to everyone who helped make this happen, and to the writers who enriched us with their sharing. And an additional thanks to Cowboy Angel Blue who entertained us at the afterparty at Karpeles.

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Tonight it's the Blood on the Tracks Express, boarding at 5:30 from the Depot, but there are more events coming that you will want to be aware of. Thank you to the Duluth News Tribune for helping get the word out. Here's a summary of the next three days. We do hope you will join us somewhere along the way.

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ONE MORE REMINDER: Fast on the heels of Duluth Dylan Fest is the annual DuSu Film Festival. Richard Hansen, who hosted the 48-Hour Dylan Fest Film Contest showing Tuesday is exceedingly enthusiastic about this year's offering of films. If you go http://www.ds-ff.com you will find links to the full schedule from June 1-5. Richard is, by nature, exuberant about film but this year seems especially so. Note: the entire film fest is free, a true love offering to the Twin Ports community.

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Engage it!

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.