Tuesday, 1:00 p.m.
Sometimes what is beautiful seems to stay hidden: why have I not read the poetry of Connie Wanek before? She has two books out, Bonfire and Hartley Field. She lives in Duluth, which is not that far the way we measure, where she works at the public library and restores old houses. And writes terrific poetry, I might add.
"I'm very honored to have been invited," Wanek said. "I won't take any more than my allotted time."
Speaking of her umbrella: "You're like me, or I'm like you, or we're both like my mother...."
"Something saturated from the ribs down...."
Of an old widow who remarried, but not for love: she remarried, but "every calendar she marked the anniversary of when her true love died...."
Wanek has written a "confessional poem." "It's about a real confessional," she said.
"This is for my husband," she said of another poem. "He got himself a light-weight solo canoe and now he is free...."
"Can it be vanity to arrange the wilderness as your backdrop?" she wondered.
"I always know when I've had a meal that has garlic in it," she said. "When I was younger, it was just food. Now I say, 'I think there was garlic in that."
"It wasn't a proud neighborhood," she said. "It had a lot of tolerance for variety, considering it was Minnesota."
"I believe we all end up with what we really want," she said. "Look around. You wanted this...."
"He was as honest as the snow...."
Of musical chairs: "Another cruel children's game...."
"Why had our parents given birth to so many of us?"
"I have two poems here, one for my daughter, one for my son. You have to be fair...."
"Determined to different things differently, in the tradition of your people, mixed breeds from a dozen lands...."
The crows "only know that no one here is angry any more...."
New snow: "it protects the crocus bulbs white as ovaries...."
"New genius, new snow...."
"It's good to see old tracks buried, then made again...."
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