I love me a good dog, I love me a good dog poem, and I love me some good Bart Sutter poetry!

The good dog I love is our mutt Murphy, aka Murf, the Murfster, Murfkins, Mur Mur, and Cur, as in “Drop that (baseball cap, napkin, New Yorker, sock, shoe…)!  Drop it right now!  DROP!  Now drop it, Murphy, I mean it!  O–kay, here’s a treat, you cur!  Now drop it. Good boy.

Now here’s a good dog poem I love (line breaks compliments of wordpress, not Bart):

Lessons I Learned from Our Dog
Sophie, a Husky-Shepherd … Read More

Although it was rightly eclipsed in the national news by the monster tornado that destroyed so much of Joplin, Missouri, here in Minneapolis we also suffered a serious tornado on Sunday, May 22.  It hit one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, the North Side, where many blacks live, and where hundreds of folks are now homeless.  More than 5,000 people were affected by major damage to their dwellings, many of them renters with little or no insurance.  As of late Tuesday, 7,000 homes and business were still without power.  The storm was responsible for two deaths and forty-eight … Read More

I have a mighty crush on Robert Bly.

The crush had been pushed to the back burner for a number of years (what with so many others to have crushes on) but it came rushing to the forefront again the other night when I heard him read at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis.

I can’t remember exactly when the crush began.  It must have been when I first moved to Minnesota, though I knew his poetry before then.  But now, having moved from the diversity of people and geography in the Bay area,  I was living in Minnesota, a flat, … Read More

I went to a reading by the poet Gary Snyder last night at Plymouth Congregational Church, one of Minneapolis’s great liberal churches.  It was standing room only, and I was one of those standing.

Imagine your platonic ideal of a beloved, revered, erudite but approachable (male) professor of literature and that is what Gary Snyder, white hair and beard, a white shirt, tie and dark coat, looks like.  Born in 1930, he seemed hardy and vital, and cast a warm, benevolent spell over the audience, some of whom in the packed sanctuary were sitting in the choir loft, though they were not required to sing.