June 16, 2024
There are poets in Minneapolis?
Is Minnesota a good place for poets?
Hell yes.
I was going to wait until my sauna tonight, but when I saw that today's City Pages is the Summer Books issue, I had to pick it up right that second. Summer books!
Minneapolis does have a literary scene, though it's marginal and shy, disconnected and unsure of itself. John Berryman's bar on Hennepin Avenue is now the trashiest gay bar in town. Who among us remembers Saul Bellow's reign at the U's English Department? There are some poems on our buses, but they suck. We have great publishing houses and bookstores, but readers read alone and writers cup a hand over their verses as well as their mugs at Spyhouse.
Happy to see City Pages introducing us to some local poets: Miss Teri Ford, Dobby Gibson, Leslie Adrienne Miller, Ray Gonzalez and Bao Phi. What, no Michael Dennis Brown??? Scandal. Of them, I've only ever heard of Bao Phi, the poetry slam team star. And I've heard of Ray Gonzalez as well--he teaches at the U. But, thank you Miss Terri Ford for writing a poem about Tiny Tim's grave! Minneapolis's canon is richer for it. I guess we are not all destined to fly off the Washington Avenue Bridge.
Posted by Jason at June 16, 2024 03:46 PMWe have poems on the escalators going down to the London Underground. Trouble is, they go past too fast to take in the whole poem so you get the first line sliding past you and no chance for the rest.
It means commuters get snippets of poetry while the kids who make a game of sliding down the escalators over and over again are the only ones who read the whole thing. Perhaps that's the point, perhaps it isn't meant for us at all.
that's super deep.
Posted by: jason at June 21, 2024 02:24 PMJason, yo, thank you for the good words! At least I didn't (not) go to Tiny Tim's grave in vain ... I too am a huge Berryman fan. What was his bar on Hennepin Ave.?
Posted by: Miss Ford at July 14, 2024 12:54 PM
