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Laurie Hertzel is senior editor for books at the Star Tribune, where she has worked since 1996. She is the author of "News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist," winner of a Minnesota Book Award.

Posts about Readings

Ethan Rutherford launches story collection at Micawber's

Posted by: Laurie Hertzel Updated: May 8, 2013 - 2:52 PM

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Ethan Rutherford reads from "The Peripatetic Coffin" at his book launch at Micawber's.

Ethan Rutherford reads from "The Peripatetic Coffin" at his book launch at Micawber's.

 

 

 Hans Weyandt, co-owner of Micawber's Bookstore, got things rolling Tuesday night when he introduced Ethan Rutherford, author of the new short-story collection, "The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories" (Ecco Press).

" 'Peripatetic' is a word that is not used by anyone anywhere in the United States today," Weyandt said. He said he enjoyed calling up distributors and ordering the book, because it required them not only to pronounce the word but also to spell it.

Weyandt's little bookstore in St. Paul's St. Anthony Park neighborhood was packed to the stacks with friends and fans of Rutherford, there for the first stop of his rather extensive book tour, which will take him to the West Coast next week, and then to the East Coast. Rutherford, who lives in Minneapolis with his wife and toddler son, is a graduate of the University of Minnesota's MFA program in creative writing. Rutherford also reviews books for the Star Tribune.

 

Matt Burgess reads from his work-in-progress.

Matt Burgess reads from his work-in-progress.

 

A friend he met in the program, Matt Burgess--author of "Dogfight: A Love Story"--was up next. (And in the crowd, their writing teachers--Charles Baxter and Julie Schumacher.) (Also in the crowd, novelist Peter Bognanni, winner of the American Academy's Rome Prize, removing his hip white-framed sunglasses as he dashed through the door a little late.)

After a few more jokes about the word "peripatetic" (which Burgess said he had to look up the meaning of), Burgess read a brief, very funny scene from his work-in-progress, "Uncle Janis," a novel about undercover narcotics cops in Brooklyn.

The bookstore was crowded on this warm spring night, and Rutherford swung the door a few times, trying to kick up a breeze. (There was also free beer, which might have served to both cool and warm the guests.)

"This is a sort of wonderful day," Rutherford said. "It's like a wedding, except I don't have to dance."

He chose Micawber's for his book launch, he said, both because it's his favorite bookstore, and because he loves independent bookstores in general. "I've tricked you all here, I've given you free beers, so please buy a book," he urged the crowd. (Any book, he said, though he would especially like it if they bought his book.) (And they did, selling out Weyandt's supply of "Coffin.")

Rutherford's collection contains three sea stories, including the title story (the well-traveled coffin is a submarine), and Rutherford told the audience that it had long been his wish "to write 'Moby Dick II.' It turns out that's not a story that anybody was waiting for."

 

Micawber's Bookstore was packed.

Micawber's Bookstore was packed.

 

 And then he read from the last story in his collection, "Dirwhals!," a futuristic tale about whale-hunters--though these whales live not in the sea, but in the sand.

And after that, booksigning and beer and the reading turned into a happy party. Like a wedding, but with no dancing.

 

Tonight's Earth Day reading with John Caddy is postponed due to, of course, weather.

Posted by: Laurie Hertzel Updated: April 22, 2013 - 2:30 PM

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This is NOT what the Twin Cities will look like later tonight. Staff file photo (from 2010) by David Joles

This is NOT what the Twin Cities will look like later tonight. Staff file photo (from 2010) by David Joles

How cruel can Mother Nature get? The winter storm that we are supposed to get tonight (but I am positive we won't; we can't; we cannot endure another half-foot of snow) has prompted the cancellation of tonight's Earth Day poetry reading at Open Book.

Poet and photographer John Caddy sent around an e-mail this afternoon, saying, "Our insane winter predicts nasty snow tonight with 6"-8", so the Earth Day reading is postponed for one week. We will read Monday, April 29, 7 pm at Open Book. Pray for Minnesota winter to fold its leaky tent and slink away."

Hear, hear. I mean, hear that, Winter?

The Earth Day reading will include Caddy, Joe and Nancy Paddock, George Roberts, Scott King of Red Dragonfly Press, Daniel McGuire and Joe Alfano, with music by the Tjornblom Quartet.

It is sponsored by Morning Earth and Milkweed Editions. Open Book is at 1011 Washington Av. S., Mpls.

Poet Jane Hirshfield reads in Minneapolis tonight

Posted by: Laurie Hertzel Updated: April 15, 2013 - 11:53 AM

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Poet Jane Hirshfield.

Poet Jane Hirshfield.

 

Poet and translator Jane Hirshfield, author of seven books of poetry, including "Come, Thief," and "After," will speak in Minneapolis at 7 p.m. tonight (Monday, April 15) at Plymouth Congregational Church, 1900 Nicollet Av., Mpls.

Hirshfield graduated from Princeton University in the first class that included women. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets. She has published four books of poetry in translation, including "Mirabai," which she worked on with Robert Bly.

Her reading this evening is free and open to the public.

 

 

 

 

Bookstore's love poem competition down to a few finalists

Posted by: Laurie Hertzel Updated: April 4, 2013 - 2:43 PM

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Common good poetry. Photo courtesy of David Enyeart, Common Good Books.

Common good poetry. Photo courtesy of David Enyeart, Common Good Books.

You can't miss the finalists in the Common Good Books first annual amateur love poem contest--they're printed on huge sheets (three by four feet) of posterboard and are suspended from the ceiling of the bookstore. You can read them even without your bifocals. And then, after you've found them and read them, you can go up to the counter and vote for your favorite.

The finalists were chosen by G. Keillor, Prop., himself from more than 150 entries, and he will announce the winner at 1 p.m. on April 21 at a celebration of poetry at Weyerhaeuser Chapel at Macalester College.

The finalists are: Emily Walz, Thomas Kendrick, Barbara Miller, Carol Van Hale, Bernard Jacob, Delores Mixer, Norman Holen, Anne Parsons, Roy Close, Rob Dougherty, Ginger Bolling and Thomas Hamburg.

The bookstore is at 38 S. Snelling Av., St. Paul. Stop by, read, cast your vote. And watch your head.

Robert Bly reads to a packed house

Posted by: Laurie Hertzel Updated: April 3, 2013 - 6:24 AM

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Robert Bly at the American Swedish Institute, launching "Airmail." Star Tribune photo by Jerry Holt.

Robert Bly at the American Swedish Institute, launching "Airmail." Star Tribune photo by Jerry Holt.

 

It was only at the very end of the evening, when Robert Bly read a poem by his longtime friend Tomas Tranströmer, that he grew animated, his voice dipping and swaying, gaining in power. He crisply enunciated the words, added that famous little Bly twist, and looked straight out at the crowd.

Up until then, he had been a bit subdued, reading aloud softly from his new book, "Airmail: The Letters of Robert Bly and Tomas Tranströmer," not looking up. He launched the book Tuesday evening at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, reading aloud some of the letters he had written to Tranströmer in the 1960s and 70s and 80s. Roland Thorstensson of Gustavus Adolphus College read the Tranströmer replies.
 
The room was packed, 300 people there to listen to three dignified and serious men on stage--Bly, Thorstensson, and poet Thomas R. Smith, who spent ten years editing the collection, which was published this month by Minneapolis’ Graywolf Press.
 
Do not think he spent the full decade on the book, Smith told the crowd in his opening remarks. “The manuscript languished half-finished in a drawer until October 2011, when Tomas Tranströmer won the Nobel Prize for literature--after which I worked on it furiously.”
 
Jeff Shotts, Graywolf Press’s executive editor, called Smith a “tireless, passionate poet and editor,” noting that in the course of his research Smith had discovered among the letters a Tranströmer poem that had never been published.
 
“I can’t tell you what a remarkable moment that was,” Shotts said.
 
Thomas R. Smith and Robert Bly sign books after Tuesday's reading.

Thomas R. Smith and Robert Bly sign books after Tuesday's reading.

Later in the evening Bly and Thorstensson read that poem, “Conflict,” Bly reading it in English, Thorstensson in Swedish.
 
But the night really belonged to Bly, 86, a man whose “contributions to global literature cannot be exaggerated,” Shotts said.
 
His famous mane of white hair is shorter, and he was a little shaky mounting the steps to the stage, but his voice remains sweet and nasal and—especially when he read poetry—strong and true.
 
The letters, sometimes teasing, sometimes serious, always affectionate, reflect the close friendship between the two poets. They touched on life in the country (both in Minnesota and in Sweden), the Vietnam war, Lyndon Johnson, and their own work. Getting published in Bly’s magazine, The Sixties, Transtromer wrote, is “fully comparable to arriving in Valhalla and drinking beer with the heroes.”
 
At the end of the evening, Shotts read one last letter—a note written Monday by Tranströmer and sent, this time, by e-mail rather than airmail.
 
“Robert, we both have reached that time in life when we must avoid the really long trips,” Tranströmer wrote. “That’s why I am not right now by your side as our letters are opened in Minneapolis for everyone to read. But, as always, I await a spirited letter from you about this evening.”
 
He ended with a postscript, congratulating Bly on receiving the Robert Frost Medal, the highest award from the Poetry Society of America. Bly and his wife, Ruth, will travel to New York later this week for the ceremony.
 
And as Bly sat quietly in his chair on the stage, the 300 people in the room rose to their feet, and applauded.

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