How to Float by Sara Lynne Puotinen (HOW TO Series)

How to Float
by Sara Lynne Puotinen

Try to
imagine you’re
light lighter the lightest
high higher the highest, the most
buoyant.

Picture
when your daughter
cradles you in the shallow
water. Carrying you like a
baby.

You two
laughing splashing
forgetting gravity.
Unburdened by weight, land’s logic.
Carefree.

Happy.
Pretend you are
sparkling grapefruit water
excessively effervescent
bubbly.

Barely
there. Only a
hint of flavor, mostly
fizziness shimmering at the
surface.

Do not
think about what’s
below or not below
you. In fact, do not think at all
just be

relaxed.
Calm. Not Heavy.
Almost bursting with air.
Breezy & Loose. Liberated.
Unmoored.

Flat. Stretched.
Reaching out. Be
the horizon that cuts
through sky water, above beneath.
Be the

big bridge
spanning the lake.
Delivering the goods.
Linking lands and worlds and lives in
between.

Believe
in breath and your
body’s ability
to not stay sunk but to rise up,
to float.

IMAGE: Woman floating by Jennifer Bartlett (1997), used by permission.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Mid-June through the end of August is open swim season in Minneapolis. For two hours three times a week, you can swim back and forth across Lake Nokomis. I have been participating since 2013. I swim across the lake and then later, I write about what I remember doing/feeling/noticing during my swim in an online log. In 2018, I turned these log entries into a series of poems. This particular poem was inspired by a memory of swimming with my daughter, the desire to reflect on the joy of weightlessness, and my love of Adelaide Crapsey‘s cinquain.

PHOTO: Lake Nokomis, Minneapolis, Minnesota (October 7, 2017) by Thomson200, used by permission.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sara Lynne Puotinen lives in south Minneapolis, Minnesota, near the Mississippi River Gorge, where she reads and writes and tries to be upright and outside as much as possible. She earned a B.A. in religion, an M.A. in ethics, and a Ph.D in women’s studies, which all inform her experiments in paying attention and her playful troubling of what it means to write while running (or swimming or moving), to run while writing, and to do both while losing her central vision from a degenerative eye disease. Her most recent project, Mood Rings, is a series of nine poems about her moods as she loses her central vision from cone dystrophy, using her blind spot and the Amsler grid as form. For more of her work, visit sarapuotinen.com.

An offering by Jennifer Hernandez (MY FRONT DOOR Series)

An offering
by Jennifer Hernandez

At my doorstep
four boxes of Samoas
delivered by my friend,
mother of Girl Scouts.

An envelope taped
to the door, $20 cash.
The virus can survive
5 days on paper.

She rang the bell to seal
delivery. We smiled weakly
through the glass outer door
& waved.

I gathered the wafers,
sold on scarcity principles
long before TP shortages,
carried them gently inside.

Small comfort.
Holy Communion
for the three sons,
near-adults, who now live

cloistered lives in dark rooms
murmuring prayers, incantations
hypnotized by flickering screens
waiting, waiting for deliverance.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: A Facebook post from a teacher/writer friend about Girl Scout cookies turned into a special delivery turned into a poem. As a person fortunate enough to be waiting out the coronavirus in my own home with my family, I am grateful for the silver lining of having the time and space to reflect and write about the experience. There are many small pleasures of human connection that I hope to never take quite so much for granted again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Hernandez, Minnesota teacher/writer, has performed her poetry at a non-profit garage and a taxidermy-filled bike shop. Currently, she’s on a crash course to implement distance learning with middle school English learners, while simultaneously homeschooling her high school sons. She didn’t sign up for this. Recent publications include Three Drops in a Cauldron, Talking Stick, Writers Resist, Sleet Magazine, and Poetry in the Park in the Dark. She is overjoyed at the return of Silver Birch Press.

The Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, MN

Built in 1910, and originally named the Sam S. Shubert Theater, the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, is home to The Prairie Home Companion, the weekly National Public Radio variety series hosted by Garrison Keillor. Currently owned by Minnesota Public Radio, the theater serves as venue for a range dramatic and musical works. In 1994, the theater was renamed in honor of St. Paul’s native son, F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose birthday we celebrate today — September 24th.

Photo: QuoinMonkey, All Rights Reserved

Happy 117th birthday, F. Scott Fitzgerald

On September 24, 1896, the great American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald made his earthly debut in the house pictured above, located at 481 Laurel Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota. Fitzgerald’s father named him Francis Scott Key in honor of his distant cousin who wrote the “Star Spangled Banner.” Fitzgerald is pictured at left in 1897, bundled up for the Minnesota weather, with his birthplace in the background.

In 2004, Friends of Libraries USA declared Fitzgerald’s birthplace a National Literary Landmark — one of only a few such designations in the United States.

Record Release Show: David Dondero Golden Hits Vol. 1

Come one, come all — if you are in the San Francisco, California, environs or plan to visit — to the David Dondero Record Release Show on June 5, 2013 (it’s free!). If you haven’t heard of singer/ songwriter/ guitarist David Dondero — like Bob Dylan, a native of Duluth, Minnesota, and like Dylan named one of the “Best Living Songwriters” by National Public Radio‘s Robin Hilton, who called Dondero “a brilliant artist” — do yourself a favor and check out this amazing performer/poet.

If you’re a fan of Tom Waits, Daniel Johnston, and other original bard/troubadours, you’ll  feel as if you’ve discovered a new planet in the indy folk/rock universe when you start to listen to David Dondero. Check out “#Zero with a Bullet” at youtube.com.

WHAT: David Dondero Record Release Show for Golden Hits Vol. 1

WHO: David Dondero with special guests Tom Heyman and Rymodee

WHEN: Wednesday, June 5, 2013, 8 p.m.

WHERE: Rite Spot Cafe, 2099 Folsom St. (at 17th St.) San Francisco, California, 94110

MORE INFORMATION: davedondero.com or unrequitedrecords.com

David Dondero‘s lyrics will appear in the upcoming Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology — available in June 2013. Stay tuned for more information.

Writing Advice from Natalie Goldberg

“When I first moved to Minnesota, Jim White, a very fine poet, said to me, ‘Whatever you do, don’t become a regional writer.’ Don’t get caught in the trap of becoming provincial. While you write about the cows in Iowa, how they stand and bend to chew, feel compassion simultaneously for the cows in Russia, in Czechoslovakia…Go into your region, but don’t stop there. Let it pique your curiosity to examine and look closely at more of the world.”

NATALIE GOLDBERG, author of Writing Down the Bones

Chronicles, Vol. One, Memoir by Bob Dylan and Artists from Minnesota

CHRONICLES, Volume One (Excerpt)

Memoir by Bob Dylan

“[In 1961] I didn’t follow baseball that much but I did know that Roger Maris who was with the Yankees was in the process of breaking Babe Ruth’s home-run record…Maris was from Hibbing, Minnesota…On some level I guess I took pride in being from the same town. There were other Minnesotans, too, that I felt akin to. Charles Lindberg, the first aviator to fly nonstop across the Atlantic in the ‘20s. He was from Little Falls. F. Scott Fitzgerald, a descendant of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and who himself wrote The Great Gatsby, was from St. Paul…Sinclair Lewis had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first American to do so. Lewis had written Elmer Gantry and was the master of absolute realism, had invented it. He was from Sauk Center, Minnesota. And then there was Eddie Cochran, one of the early rock-and-roll geniuses who was from Albert Lee, Minnesota. Native sons—adventurers, prophets, writers, and musicians. They were all from the North Country. Each one followed their own vision, didn’t care what the pictures showed. Each one of them would have understood what my inarticulate dreams were about. I felt like I was one of them or all of them put together.”

Note: This quote from the final pages of Chronicles, Volume One, by Bob Dylan called to mind other favorite artists from Minnesota, though Dylan wouldn’t have been aware of them in 1961. A nod to filmmakers Joel Coen & Ethan Coen (Fargo) and Terry Gilliam (Brazil), author Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), cartoonist Charles M. Schultz (Peanuts), and musician Prince.

Published in 2004, Chronicles, Volume One, by Bob Dylan has met with critical and reader acclaim — and was one of five finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dylan is currently working on Chronicles, Volume Two.