029: How to Talk Minnesotan (unaffiliated with that franchise)

AN EMAIL IN SEVERAL PARTS WHEREIN THE LONG STRETCH OF SUMMER BEGINS

First, THA NEWS.
I have successfully made it to North Dakota (I saw the Chicago Fire FC at O'Hare! They were all on their phones), then Idaho (mountains are neat, plains less so), then back to North Dakota (plains again). We spent a total of four full days in Twin Falls, Idaho (onetime home to poet Robin Blaser) and saw many friends, as well as numerous students who graduated. I went to Missoula for the first time! That area of Montana is quite beautiful. In fact, the mountains in Idaho and Montana are some of the most gorgeous places I have ever been. And we drove through Craters of the Moon, which was some of the weirdest landscape I've ever seen. I'm definitely going to try to get out there again for a proper visit, instead of just driving through.

Since then it's been incredibly hot back here on the ND farm, and I've been trying to map out a general plan of my time out here. I visited my mom at home for the first time in many, many years. Since my dad's health started failing, and now since he's died, the yard and several other bits of property have really taken a hit as far as maintenance is concerned. My brother and a number of family friends are all chipping in to try and get back to some level of working condition for many things, from the trees to the various vehicles to the fishing tackle. It's gonna take some doing, but it shouldn't take that much work in the grand scheme of things.

Back here at the farm, that's effectively the same position I'm in... getting things back to default. Cleaning, reorganizing, integrating things from the move two years past. I do have a shed to build this year that I was gonna do last year before the weather got too involved, and provided this ridiculous heat wave breaks, I should be on that in the next week or two.

Work-wise, we've finished the first season of the podcast, and so now I can fully devote time to finishing the writing projects I have going, ie, THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT and CONFESSIONS FROM A DRAINAGE DITCH. The latter will most likely be the one that gets released first, as the former is going to be the next thing I throw into the submissions gauntlet. HYDROLOGY, which was my graduate thesis, is still being hucked around out there after almost four years, and one damn day someone will pick it up. I just have no idea who.

In any case, those two newer writing projects and the Patreon will be the focus for this summer.

Second, INTERLUDE.

Third, CONSUMPTION.
- Recently finally purchased Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot by Rachel Pollack. While I own a reprint of The Vertigo Tarot, I have never had a copy of this widely-cited book. Ms. Pollack died earlier this year of lymphoma, and I feel bad for not having picked up the book earlier, when the few dollars she may have gotten might have helped. In any case, I hope to get to it after some of the other things I have in the hopper.
- Apparently my copy of the DIE Roleplaying Game (based on Kieron Gillen's comic book of the same name) arrived at the apartment in Chicago last week, and the kiddo has been reading that. I skimmed through the pdf copy I got ages ago, but I'll probably start digging into that more in the near future, as well as planning a Starfinder campaign.
- That's... that's really it. The last couple weeks have mostly been driving, sleeping, and meeting with people.

Fourth, HUSTLE.
Normally, I'd be trying to tell you to get my book here, but I have some plans happening there, too, and can't in good conscience suggest that.

If you're liking this whole project and want to support directly, here is my Patreon. There are lots of little benefits you can get there, from access to a subscriber-only Discord to poems written to your specifications to subcriber-only limited-edition chapbooks.

Finally, THE OUTRO.
Usually I make the connections between the various sections in each newsletter a little less blatant, but I wanted to say a bit more about the INTERLUDE this week, and why I chose it.

James Wright has spent some time 'round these parts of the Upper Midwest. Obviously in Minnesota, as above, but also the Fargo-Moorhead area where I grew up (I've been in a train station he's written about in Fargo, for example), as well as some time in the Rockies and Pacific Northwest--he received his PhD from the University of Washington where he studied under Roethke. In fact, it turns out that he was teaching at what was then Moorhead State University--now Minnesota State University-Moorhead--when my mom was first there as an undergrad, before I was born. Wright's birthday, incidentally, was just a week before mine (though, obviously, some 60-ish years earlier.) He struggled with depression from a very young age, as well as alcoholism.

Pine Island is a small town northwest of Rochester, MN, where his other famous poem, "A Blessing", is set. There is at least one reader of this very newsletter that currently resides in Rochester, incidentally.

I bring all this up mostly because many of the poems in CONFESSIONS FROM A DRAINAGE DITCH are either directly or indirectly inspired by Wright's work. Much of his writing speaks to an experience like mine: rural, oppressive, with weather that is always too extreme in any direction, but still has moments of great beauty ("Suddenly I realize / that if I stepped out of my body I would break / into blossom." from "A Blessing") as well as profound sadness (see "Lying in a Hammock..." above). I well and truly hope I can come close to the level of verisimilitude that Wright's work represents in the Midwestern experience. Not because I want it to resonate with the people here--sort of how various Coen Brothers movies feel to us--but with people who have never been here--sort of how various Coen Brothers movies feel to them.

That said, I just heard a pheasant out in the back slough, and we have to pick the dog up from the vet soon, so I should probably get moving on to other stuff. Take care of yourselves. See you in the next one.