Inspirations: Composing Myself

I write about rivers. My work reflects my landscape, but I would not call my work "nature writing." Instead I am taken by the forces in the landscape, and I find that these propel my poetry. 

This video featuring Anna Thorvaldsdottir, composer, expresses the same impulse. She says this about her inspiration: "sometimes it's the balances and the structural forces and the opposites in nature...."

 

I found a wonderful recording: the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra performing "Before We Fall," a new composition from Ann Thorvaldsdottir. Amazing.  It's just the kind of music I love to listen to while writing.... centered on the cello (it was created for the cellist Johannes Moser), instrumental, and rich with texture and nuances. The Minnesota Orchestra will perform this piece in January 2027. I'm definitely going to be there.

The link below is a video of the performance of "Before We Fall" that premiered at Musikkitalo in Helsinki, Finland. You will glimpse the twisted shape of the organ pipes in this video -- they look like a tangle of branches from a large tree. The organ is not played, but the image of silvery tree limbs speaks of Nordic landscapes.  

Before We Fall:   

https://vimeo.com/1156421110

This feature video of Thorvaldsdottir is available through the Wise Music Group, representing composers and songwriters across the globe.  See more at https://www.youtube.com/@WiseMusicGroup

Twin Ports Perceptions: Superior, WI and Duluth, MN

 

Writing about Landscape

How does landscape impact the creation of poems or stories?  Zora Neale Hurston described aspects of the self in geological terms, saying our memories come from the weight, fire, and pressure of the landscape where we came up.  

This fall, the Twin Ports Perceptions project will invite six award-winning Twin Ports authors (three from each side of the bridge) to participate in two moderated panel discussions to talk about how they portray Duluth and Superior in their work, how they grapple with issues of regional identity, and the challenges and joys of writing about where they live. You’re invited to join the discussion and add your perspective to these conversations. How would you characterize the “personalities” of the Twin Ports?

The next discussion will take place at Duluth Public Library (520 West Superior Street, Duluth) on Tuesday, October 10 at 6 p.m. and will include authors Linda LeGarde Grover, Jayson Iwen, and Sheila Packa. Both discussions will be moderated by retired librarian/author/historian Teddie Meronek. 

You’re encouraged to familiarize yourself with the work of the participating authors ahead of the event by picking up a free booklet containing writing samples from each author. Booklets can be picked upat Superior Public Library in early September and will be available while supplies last. A downloadable version of the booklet is also available on the library’s website here. Copies of the authors’ books can be checked out from your public library or purchased locally at Zenith Bookstore, the Bookstore at Fitger’s, and Barnes & Noble.

Two cities. Two nights. Two discussions. Endless possibilities. We hope you’ll join the conversation.

This program is funded in part by a grant from Wisconsin Humanities, with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Wisconsin Humanities strengthens our democracy through educational and cultural programs that build connections and understanding among people of all backgrounds and beliefs throughout the state. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this project do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Funding was also provided by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

Loose Narratives: The Art of ParkeHarrison

Today, I had the opportunity to listen to the two artists talk about their process. Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison collaborate to create haunting and magical realist images. Their work is narrative, and they explore the connections between humans, nature, and technology. Along with Bob's focus is on photography and performance art, Shana brings her experience with choreography and painting.  See this link to view images: http://parkeharrison.com/artistInfo/parkehar/biblio/2.pdf?1968 and https://fstoppers.com/portraits/amazing-surreal-work-robert-shana-parkeharrison-4009

As a writer, I was curious about how they created such deep narratives. Their approach is theatrical, and each image is like a still from a movie. Each series begins with a long period of research and planning. They bring props. They choreograph. They manipulate the photograph to add or subtract color, to blur or obscure elements, and highlight certain things.  This is a slow and painstaking process. Each year, they create about eleven individual works.
 reclamation from Catherine Edelman Gallery on Vimeo.

The protagonist, "Everyman," expresses valiant effort and ineffectual attempts to address environmental damage.  The character often has his back to the viewer, and in this way, brings the viewer toward the world inside the frame. There are many odd elements: a man wears a suit to do things nobody would wear a suit to do. He holds clouds on a string, or he sprouts seedlings from his body. There are machines or laboratory equipment used in curious ways. Veins become roots, and plants are spindly and reaching. Cones are prevalent as are clouds. He attempts to mend the crack in the landscape by stitching with an oversize needle. The narratives strongly connect to the body, and they are piercing.  There is foreboding and magic. All this--such rich narrative--exists in image, object, body, atmosphere.

More:
https://vimeo.com/15810566
Artist Talk with Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison (2010) Introduction from Catherine Edelman Gallery on Vimeo.


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The Vermilion Trail

Initially, the Vermilion Trail, the oldest road in the Arrowhead region of Minnesota, was a footpath and trail for horses.  It holds so much history. Marvin Lamppa has written about the Lake Esquagama location as an important location early in history. There are burial mounds of the Woodland Indians, about 1000 A.D. and many Native tribes afterward. Besides a road, a chain of lakes and streams flow nearby and eventually empty into Lake Superior. Soon after the end of the Civil War, veterans arrived on this road because of the news of a Gold Rush at Vermilion. There was gold, but it was embedded in quartz, and it proved too expensive and difficult to extract. Geologists arrived to evaluate the iron. Native people willingly relocated when plans were put in place to begin mining. They were given "scrip," not money.

Night Train Red Dust focuses on the Vermilion Trail or Highway 4, and some of its stories are excavated, as layers of earth might be, to reveal a different time. A common story form is 'the road story.'  The Canterbury Tales, for instance, focuses on pilgrims. Mark Twain's stories centered around the Mississippi River. My work offers several perspectives on one stretch of road, a hundred miles perhaps, in a landscape itself that is being mined and shipped on trains to ships in the Duluth harbor to go to the steel mills. It is not just people who are on the train, but the earth.

My Geology

"We forget our past, as instinct, to avoid the emotions of regret or the specter of change. This is certainly true of the Native experience in Minnesota, but true of so much else as well, including the rough and still barely-understood story of the Iron Range," said Aaron J. Brown in a MinnPost article about the 1862 mass execution of Lakota men in Mankato, Minnesota.  In an effort to know the story of my immigrant family and the place where they settled-- Zim and Toivola, Minnesota-- I have woven together family stories with those of Iron Range history. 

Night Train Red Dust: Poems of the Iron Range. These poems are about the Iron Range in Minnesota, the Vermilion Trail, and they are stories of travel and derailment about mining, radical politics, unionizing, accordion music and strong women.  Available in bookstores and online where books are sold:  Barnes & Noble http://bit.ly/VyHq4s or Amazon.com http://amzn.to/1pD8Jrm

Here are stories of Meridel LeSueur, writer; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, union organizer for IWW; Charles Bray, MD and Mary Bassett Bray, MD, doctors in Biwabik; Rev. Milma Lappala, Unitarian; Violet Turpeinen, Musician; Mr and Mrs Philip Masonovich, miner & wife; Eric Enstrom, photograph (famous for "Grace"); Gladys Koski Holmes, visual artist; women miners, laborers, farmers and immigrants.   This poem begins the collection:

Duluth's First Poet: Mary McFadden in 1907

On the Inland Sea


In his essay "Landscape and Narrative," Barry Lopez describes a correspondence between the external landscape and the psyche. The place we grow up and live becomes an internal landscape; the contour and dimensions of the earth become that of our thinking.

If this is true, then Duluth, the farthest inland port, has shaped its poets and writers. The shores of Lake Superior lap against the five miles of sandbar, Park Point is divided by water (and shipping lanes) from Wisconsin Point. The city of Duluth is on the north shore; Superior on the south shore.

The earliest poem I've found written by a citizen of Duluth is here. Mary McFadden published it in the city newspaper in 1907.  She was the editor in chief, a suffragist, and political lobbyist. Her poems focused on the natural world. This poem captures a moment between day and night as the canoe slips from land to sea, "drifting away."

Mary McFadden did drift away from Duluth about four years after this was published to become the editor of a monthly magazine in St. Paul, and then she worked in Europe for six months as a war correspondent and then moved to Greenwich Village in New York City where she wrote articles for Scientific American, and she published poems in International Journal of Medicine and Surgery.  Mary McFadden's poem reflects the style of poetry in 1907, and it marks the beginning of the literature written in Northern Minnesota.

I've discovered rich veins of material in my research about northern Minnesota's literature, history, politics, geology, geography, religion, immigration, labor history, environmental issues and public health.  The influence of women in these spheres is considerable, yet often their stories were not regarded.  The origin of this word is old, Middle English and Old French, and it meant to "take notice of to " gaze" or "heed."  Too easily these stories fall into silence and the next generation grows up without knowing, yet going into the future on a road built by the capable hands of many women and men.

Today, I went down Chester Creek Trail knowing that it was created in the early 1900s from a primeval forest with rugged waterfalls.  Mary McFadden walked here. My path took me past houses, over bridges, and along the eroding slopes, steep streets, and potholes made deeper by the spring's rapid snow melt and the floods of last year. I can no longer walk on the ground without thinking of those who walked before me. I aim to widen my vision to encompass those who are no longer visible and those who will walk after me, but aren't yet visible. Silence will never feel the same.

__________

Bakk-Hansen, Heidi.  "Mary McFadden: Duluth's Inkpot Warrior." Zenith City Online. March 1, 2013. Web. Retrieved April 6, 2013.  http://zenithcity.com/mary-mcfadden-duluths-inkpot-warrior/

The Question: What Use Is Poetry?

"We have poetry so we do not die of history," says Meena Alexander in this poem.  She also said, "Poetry and place—if poetry is the music of survival, place is the instrument on which that music is played, the gourd, the strings, the fret."

QUESTION TIME by Meena Alexander

...

Hand raised in a crowded room --
What use is poetry?

Above us, lights flickered,
Something wrong with the wiring.

I turned and saw the moon whirl in water
The Rockies struck with a mauve light,

Sea creatures cut into sky foliage.
In the shadow of a shrub once you and I

Brushed lips and thighs,
Dreamt of a past that frees its prisoners.

Standing apart I looked at her and said:
We have poetry

So we do not die of history.
And I had no idea what I meant.


(Published in the journal Black Renaissance/Noire, 2010)

In the following essay, Meena Alexander examines her influences. She grew up in India, was reared in Sudan, and is a scholar in English literature. She finds her home in the polyglot of her languages. 

excerpt:

"The first border we cross is that of the body. I put out my hands and touch the stone, the tree, the surface of the mirror and what I mark is the rim of the body, the fleeting surfaces of the world, what we might choose to call the real, irreparably marked by the notations of the body, the unique impress I take of things and the mark I make, however ephemeral in the arrangements of sense. Yet this touching and tasting that my body allows me in the world it creates so I can live, is always rendered up in a density of location, a necessary otherness. My private body, this nest of flesh and blood and bone is already marked and set in place by the temporal passages of a world I have little control over, by others who do not know me, and have never heard of me, and might wish never to do so.
...
"I think of Simone Weil and her notion of decreation - a stripping down of the self, an emptying out, essential to a burning interior life, no thing there, just a waiting on nothingness, a radical act of attentiveness. There is much in her notion that we can learn from as we try to conceive of the imagination, the image making power which works through a febrile openness to emptiness. It is only by stripping ourselves of what we thought we were that the panoply of circumstance the poem sets up, its minute theatre of sense can achieve itself. And only then is poetry permitted its seemingly serendipitous alignment with the haunting we call history."

Read the full essay
Meena Alexander, "The Question of Home"
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19032


For more information about Meena Alexander, visit her website http://www.meenaalexander.com/

Roots & Landscape

What do your roots have to do with what you write? Find contemporary poets from the country or place of your ancestors and consider the connections: image, metaphor, word choice, world view. Language transmits culture in so many ways and even as language changes, culture comes through.

My grandparents on both sides immigrated from Finland, so I’m third generation. My roots are strongly in the Finnish culture. I grew up around the language, my grandparents spoke Finnish almost exclusively and my parents spoke Finnish fluently. I had an aunt and uncle who married Finnish immigrants and this kept the language even more strong. However, I didn't learn Finnish. My mother, so determined to be an American, didn't want an accent. We spoke English. But Finnish culture is still present in every other way.

When I went looking for contemporary poets, I found a collection of women poets called Enchanting Beasts, edited and translated by Kirsti Simonsuuri. It was published by Forest Books in 1990. In the introduction, Simonsuuri eloquently examines the diversity and links Finnish poets in that volume, referring to “mythical darkness…invisible dimensions…poets of language…lyrical, imagistic space filled with forests, water, winds, and the eternal movement within.” Poets of any culture may find themselves exploring all of these, but her words draw me into that circle and I’m very pleased to be there. You can find portions of the text online at http://www.nuorenvoimanliitto.fi/beasts

Poets have so many influences. Heritage is important as are many other things. It happens that the landscape I grew up in, in northern Minnesota, is similar to that of Finland. The landscape that I live in now is still the same—indelible it is in me.