Readers will heart the Harts

Gwen and Roger Hart, now nearly 20 years removed from their time as graduate students in creative writing at Minnesota State University, have done the work and kept the faith season after season since they left the Key City in 2004.

Early this year, the stars aligned, and the couple both had new books released within a two-month span.

Roger’s second collection of short stories, “Mysteries of the Universe,” came out in early April, roughly eight weeks after Gwen’s third collection of poems, “Never Be the Same,” had been released. The new works show the Harts in fine form. Both books are wise, funny, thoughtful and thought-provoking.

The first poem in Gwen’s book comes with this lovable title: “The Easy-Bake Oven Presages Disappointment.” It’s one of more than a few of her poems that seize upon pieces of the Gen X experience, and Gwen is up to something more compelling than merely ruminating on artifacts of her youth.

She writes from a Gen X perspective, and in a culture saturated by boomer-vs.millennial noise, her perspective feels rare and rich.

“I was at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference a few years ago, and fiction writer Charles Baxter gave a talk titled ‘Things About to Disappear.’ His assertion was that it's the writer's job to document all of the things about to disappear, things the next generation will not be familiar with, and I found that really compelling,” Gwen said. “I think those generational touchstones like Garbage Pail Kids trading cards or being latch-key kids are important to get down on paper.”

The Garbage Pail Kids make an appearance in a poem called “We Loved Them and She Didn’t,” which provides readers with pleasures such as this: “They’re disgusting, / she complained, pointing to Brainy Jane’s / cracked-open skull and Clogged Duane / screaming as he was sucked down the drain.”

The latch-key kid experience comes into focus in the closing lines of Gwen’s “Endangered Species,” which places readers among the passengers on an afternoon school bus.

“Our numbers dwindled until / there were only a few of us left clinging / to the green vinyl seats, an endangered / species winding our way through / the wilds of suburbia, huddled inside / our moving imaginations,” she writes.

While Gwen’s interest in popular culture enlivens her work, Roger’s knowledge of and passion for science help make his stories stand out from the crowd. He spent 30 years teaching science in high school classrooms, and even while busy with that work, he read and wrote fiction in the summers and in stolen moments between Labor Day and Memorial Day.

“I wrote during the years I taught,” Roger said. “Sometimes, late at night, I’d fall asleep on the computer as I was writing, a case of my own stories putting me to sleep, I suppose. Once, I stopped in the middle of a class I was teaching and pretended to write a note about a boy who was misbehaving. I was actually writing the first sentence of a short story.”

The title story of Roger’s new collection begins with the first-person narrator experiencing a worrisome premonition as he walks toward the college campus where Sloane, his live-in girlfriend and a professor of physics, is busy at work.

Readers quickly come to understand the narrator’s bind when he confides, “Sloane says space-time is curved by gravity and virtual particles pop in and out of existence, but she doesn’t buy into premonitions, prophesies, omens, or signs.”

Several of Roger’s stories poke at the space between what’s science and what’s magic, but when asked if that is what’s going on in his mind, if his storytelling tendency shows his artistic brain interacting with his scientific brain, Roger paused and reflected before answering.

“I’ve never thought of it that way, my interest in science conversing with my interest in art, but, yes, the scientific and the artistic are closely connected in my mind and, I think, in reality,” he said.

“The mysteries of the universe sometimes illuminate the mysteries of the human heart and maybe the reverse is true as well. Raymond Carver wrote, ‘A writer sometimes needs to be able to stand and gape at this or that thing — a sunset or an old shoe — in absolute and simple amazement.’ The same can be said of a scientist and the stars.”

In the years since they completed their MFA degrees in Mankato, the Harts have lived in Ohio and Iowa, and now reside in Montana. Gwen teaches at Montana State University Northern in Havre, a town of about 10,000 people in a beautiful but difficult place along U.S. Highway 2, a few hours east of Glacier National Park and a short trip south of the Canadian border.

As they approach their 25th wedding anniversary, the Harts believe that being married to a fellow writer helps keep them going.

“We both know it's important for the other person to do their writing, and we cheer each other on,” Gwen said.

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