Wisconsin People & Ideas – Winter/Spring 2023

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WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ARTS & LETTERS

WISCONSIN ACADEMY STAFF

Ursa Anderson • Exhibitions and Outreach Coordinator, James Watrous Gallery

Madison Buening • Donor Relations and Stewardship Coordinator

Christopher Chambers • Interim Editor, Wisconsin People & Ideas

Jody Clowes • Director, James Watrous Gallery

Lizzie Condon • Director, Environmental Initiatives

Lulu Fregoso • Climate & Energy Intern

Kyle Hulbert • Climate & Energy Intern

Jessica James • Program Coordinator, Climate Initiatives

Erika Monroe-Kane • Executive Director

Matt Rezin • Operations Manager

Zack Robbins • Director of Development

Lidia Villazaez • Administrative Coordinator

Yong Cheng Yang • Visitor Services Associate, James Watrous Gallery

ACADEMY BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Chan Stroman • President

Tom Luljak • Immediate Past President

Roberta Filicky-Peneski • President-Elect

Richard Donkle • Treasurer

Thomas W. Still • Secretary

Rafael F. Salas • Vice President for the Arts

Kimberly M. Blaeser • Vice President for Letters

Robert D. Mathieu • Vice President for Sciences

Andrew Richards • Foundation President

Steve Ackerman, Madison

Ruben Anthony, Madison

Lillian Brown, Ripon

Frank D. Byrne, Monona

Jay Handy, Madison

B.J. Hollars, Eau Claire

Amy Horst, Sheboygan Falls

Michael Morgan, Milwaukee

Kevin Reilly, Verona

Brent Smith, La Crosse

ACADEMY FOUNDATION

Ira Baldwin (1895–1999) • Foundation Founder

Mark J. Bradley • Foundation President

Kristen Carreira • Foundation Vice President

Richard Donkle • Foundation Treasurer

Arjun Sanga • Foundation Secretary

Roberta Filicky-Peneski

Jack Kussmaul

Tom Luljak

Andrew Richards

Chan Stroman

Steve Wildeck

Editor’s Note

The days are getting longer, the sun is shining on the thick drifts of snow we got last weekend, and my old dog, Clio, my companion for the past fifteen years, sleeps beside my desk as I think about winter, and spring. I’ve not yet embraced winter activities beyond shoveling the sidewalk. I find it hard to bundle up and go outdoors when it’s below zero, as it is this morning. Winter, for me, means more time at home with Clio, and more time reading books, which is a nice segue into this special double issue of the magazine. And it has been a special issue to put together. In these pages we highlight writers, books, and reading. Nickolas Butler introduces Nicholas Gulig, his friend and our new poet laureate. Kim Suhr takes a look at the state of book publishing in Wisconsin, and we review five new books worth checking out.

This issue has by design a literary bent though, as always, we provide space for the other pillars of the Academy. In the sciences, there’s a story on prescribed burns, native bees, and biodiversity, and the Wisconsin Table veers into the science of one of our culinary traditions. In the arts, we have an interview with the artist Dakota Mace and a preview of upcoming exhibitions at the Watrous Gallery this spring. We also note the passing last year of Agate Nesaule and David Rhodes, writers whose work ranks among the best to come out of this state, and who are greatly missed. If you have not read their books, I encourage you to seek them out, as well as other books by Wisconsin authors and books published by Wisconsin presses. As some wise person once wrote, “the person who does not read good books has no advantage over the person who can’t read them.” (I’ve seen this attributed to both Mark Twain and Dear Abby but I have not been able to verify it; the adage did apparently appear in the Inland Steel Company Safety Bulletin No. 10 in 1914.) Regardless of the source, it’s a sentiment I share, so I am pleased to present this special issue. I hope that you enjoy the stories and the images in these pages, and that they inspire you to read further, and of course, to get outside and explore the natural wonders of Wisconsin as winter turns to spring.

Laura Camille Tuley

Nicholas Gulig, Wisconsin Poet Laureate, December 2022. Credit: Colin Crowley

VOLUME 69 · NUMBERS 1-2

WINTER / SPRING • 2023

Wisconsin People & Ideas is the quarterly magazine of the nonprofit Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. Wisconsin Academy members receive an annual subscription to this magazine.

Since 1954, the Wisconsin Academy has published a magazine for people who are curious about the world and Wisconsin ideas. Wisconsin People & Ideas features thoughtful stories about the state’s people and culture, original creative writing and artwork, and informative articles about Wisconsin innovation. The magazine also hosts annual fiction and poetry contests that provide opportunity and encouragement for Wisconsin writers.

Copyright © 2023 by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Postage is paid in Madison, Wisconsin.

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

CHRISTOPHER CHAMBERS interim editor

JEAN LANG copy editor

CHARLOTTE FRASCONA cold reader

JODY CLOWES arts editor

HUSTON DESIGN design & layout

ISSN 1558-9633

From the Director

I love to read. I always have. My bedside table and end tables bear significant towers of books waiting to be read or in various stages of completion, books paused in a transitional place before reading resumes or they move on, shared with a friend or finding a home on my bookshelves. I love how the intimacy of reading, done alone and with the scenes envisioned in a private, personal way, mirrors the act of writing.

Championing the Letters is central to the Academy. From the rich legacy of writers recognized as Academy Fellows to our longstanding commitment to publishing contemporary works, the Academy shines a light on the brilliant writers among us. I enjoy reading the winning entries from the Poetry & Fiction contests and seeing the community of Wisconsin writers being strengthened through the Academy Courses.

I am humbled to think about the many writers across the state spending time, honing their craft, refining language and imagery, and then opening their work to readers. I am grateful for the dedication by the Academy and all the entities in Wisconsin that share this passion—the bookstores and the libraries, the presses and publications, the university programs and the writer’s organizations. Together, we are supporting, encouraging, and exploring an art and craft valued by many.

This shared focus and appreciation for the Letters is inspiring— just as I find with the shared passion and dedication in the Arts and Sciences. Finding common values, making connections, and fostering collaboration are at the heart of our work at the Academy. This is how we best thrive—together.

Erika Monroe-Kane, Executive Director

Sharon Vanorny

News for Members

JAMES WATROUS GALLERY

The James Watrous Gallery’s open call for artists and guest curators closed on March 1, and gallery staff are preparing materials for the jurors— Portia Cobb, Anwar Floyd-Pruitt, Yvette Pino, Rae Senarighi, and Leslie Walfish—who will review the applications in three rounds and make final selections by late spring. The Watrous Gallery’s exhibition schedule for the next four years will be focused on artists and curators who are awarded solo shows and curatorial projects. We’re excited to see the results.

CLIMATE & ENERGY INITIATIVE

Our successful Climate Fast Forward conference in 2022 sparked ideas, actions, and next steps towards mitigating climate change. Drawing on the ideas of nearly 400 attendees, the C&E Team has consolidated these actions for a briefing on March 22nd. Register at our website.

FICTION AND POETRY CONTESTS

Our annual Fiction and Poetry Contests for Wisconsin writers are now open for submissions, and for the first time accepting online submissions. Final judges for 2023 are Debra Monroe (fiction) and Nikki Wallschlaeger (poetry). Submission guidelines at our website. Deadline March 31.

JOIN THE FULL CIRCLE SOCIETY

The Full Circle Society helps to create a better world inspired by Wisconsin ideas. Consider joining this group of amazing people in making an important investment for future generations. By adding the Wisconsin Academy to your will or estate plan, or by another type of planned gift, you become a member of the Full Circle Society and may be able to reduce your family’s future tax burdens. Contact Zack Robbins, zrobbins@ wisconsinacademy.org

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

We truly want to hear from you. Let us know what you think. Send your feedback and comments about Wisconsin People & Ideas and other Academy programs to cchambers@ wisconsinacademy.org.

IN MEMORIAM

Agate Nesaule , Latvian-born teacher and accomplished writer, passed away on June 29, 2022 in Madison at the age of 84. Her memoir, A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile, won the American Book Award in 1996 and was described by Tim O’Brien “a heartbreaking yet inspiring memoir of tragedy and healing, of war and recovery.” She also published two novels: In Love with Jerzy Kosinski and Lost Midsummers: A Novel of Women’s Friendship in Exile. She was on the faculty for over 30 years at UW–Whitewater where she co-founded the women’s studies department and received many teaching awards. She was a passionate social activist and advocated for women victimized by war. She loved reading, music, flowers, and spring. Agate Nesaule was a beautiful spirit who lived life to its fullest.

David Rhodes , acclaimed novelist, passed away on November 10, 2022, in Iowa City at the age of 75. He lived in a farmhouse in the Driftless area of Wisconsin most of his adult life. He published his first novel, The Last Good Deal Going Down, in 1971, followed by The Easter House and Rock Island Line. In 1976, he was paralyzed in a motorcycle accident, after which his books went out of print. He continued writing, and his early novels were reprinted with the 2008 publication of Driftless, his fourth novel, for which Harvard Review placed him among “the highest rank of American writers.” He published two more novels, Jewelweed and last year’s Painting Beyond Walls. David Rhodes met the end as he lived, with grace, generosity, and humor.

Agate Nesaule David Rhodes

ART AGAINST THE ODDS

There are an estimated 41,000 people incarcerated in Wisconsin prisons, and more of them are making art than you might imagine, often without support, formal programs, materials, or instruction. They make art because it helps them survive incarceration. Art Against the Odds is an exhibition of 250 works by 65 currently or formerly incarcerated artists from Wisconsin’s state prisons and correctional centers. The exhibition, at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, was organized by the Portrait Society Gallery of Contemporary Art and curated by gallery owner and director Debra Brehmer and gallery manager Paul Salsieder. There are many surprises in Art Against the Odds: the quality of the work, the range of materials and innovation, the desire to communicate. But most astonishing is how these works of art provide evidence of the human spirit’s refusal to be extinguished. Work ranges from pencil drawings to a five-foot sculpture of a Ferris wheel made from 902 pieces of printer paper. Because incarcerated people are hidden from view, their humanity is often lost in statistics. Art Against the Odds is a venue to share their voices, visions, and ideas with the outside world. Art Against the Odds defines the act of art-making not only as a creative pastime but as a lifesaving tool of self-definition and self-determination for those who have been removed from society. After it closes at MIAD in March, the exhibition will tour the state, including stops in Manitowoc and Green Bay.

—Debra Brehmer

INTERACTIVE MURAL IS A LANDSCAPE FOR DISCOVERY

Wisconsin artists Alicia Rheal, Sharon Tang, and Amy Zaremba created an interactive mural entitled “A Landscape of Wisconsin Discovery,” as a celebration of the diversity of Wisconsin scientists, featuring known historical and contemporary scientists as well as anonymous figures representing the many scientists who have been “historically unrecognized, underrepresented, or lost to the inequities in the sciences.” The mural also includes nine QR codes that viewers can scan to take them to a website with information about the dozen scientists depicted in the mural and about unidentified figures representing unrecognized minority scientists. The scientists depicted include Bassam Shakhashiri, founder of the Wisconsin Initiative for Science Literacy and an Academy Fellow.

The figures in the mural are set in a landscape of visual patterning that represents scientific themes that include environmental sciences, medicine and health, data science/machine learning, microbiology/ microbiomes, scientific tools, and organization of ideas. The mural was created in partnership with the Illuminating Discovery’s Science to Street Art initiative at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, the Morgridge Institute for Research, and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. It was installed during the summer of 2022 to inspire people to explore and engage in science and is on display in the first floor atrium of the Discovery Building in Madison.

Stephan Shambert

Dominic Marak, Portrait of a Prisoner: Fernando Torres, Disposable series, 2021

A Landscape of Wisconsin Discovery mural detail.

RAINBOW SMELT CONFIDENTIAL: AN INVASIVE SPECIES ON THE MENU

BY CHRISTOPHER CHAMBERS

Anthony Bourdain, celebrity chef and provocateur, once said that good food and good eating involve an element of risk. I believe he was talking about oysters. One of my risky food experiences involved a different kind of seafood. As I recall, it was March or April in the early 1980s when a friend from Crivitz, a small village north of Green Bay, invited me to go smelting. It was an annual tradition, he told me, and he’d just got word that the smelt were running. I didn’t know what a smelt was, why it would be running, or where to. It didn’t sound like great eating, but he said there would be beer. So I found myself one night stumbling into Lake Michigan somewhere north of Milwaukee in the dark in borrowed hip boots with a dip net.

Small fried fish appear in cuisines all over the world. In the U.K., they’re called whitebait, young sprats, which are a type of herring. The U.K.’s Fish Society explains, “the whitebait concept— very small fish cooked and eaten whole including head, fins, bones and innards–is recognized all over the world…[and] is applied to different species reflecting what is or was available locally.” In Finland, muikku is pan-fried or smoked; in Japan, shishamo , a native smelt, is grilled or fried whole and served with its roe; in Turkey, papalina are served with lemon juice and olive oil; in Mexico, charales are deep-fried and served with salt, chili peppers, and a squeeze of lime juice. Beer seems to be the beverage of choice world-wide to wash down small local fried fish, and in Wisconsin, not surprisingly, that is also the case.

For many years, springtime in Wisconsin has been smelt season. Along river mouths and shorelines of Lakes Michigan and Superior the water shimmers with smelt swimming upstream to spawn. Rainbow smelt, osmerus mordax, are a species of small bony fishes that resemble trout in their structure. This voracious invasive species from the Atlantic is part of the colorful history of the Great Lakes and an important part of the lakes’ food web over the last century. As invasive species go, smelt are not only edible, but arguably tasty, with a delicate oily flesh that has a distinctive odor and taste. In decades past, it seemed every church, tavern, fire depart-

ment, VFW Hall, and American Legion Post in the state had a smelt fry in the spring. In those days, spawning smelt were so great in number that, as the folklore has it, you could walk across the river on their backs. Wisconsin: A Guide to the Badger State (published in 1941) describes the annual smelt run in Marinette:

The smelt run in greatest number at night, and from 9 p.m. until midnight all Marinette is festive. The Interstate Bridge is closed to traffic, every foot is crowded with poles, flashlights, machines for lifting the seines, and baskets full of shining fish. The riverbank is a blaze of light from bonfires. Barkers yell their wares, fireworks light the whole sky, and beer flows freely. The festival reaches a climax with the crowning of the Smelt Queen.

It is generally believed that rainbow smelt made their way into the Great Lakes after being stocked into Michigan’s Crystal Lake in 1912. According to Jake Vander Zanden, Director of UW–Madison’s Center for Limnology, “rainbow smelt established in Lake Michigan in the 1920s and subsequently spread to the other Great Lakes from there.” He explains that back then native lake trout were thriving and preyed heavily on smelt. That changed in the late 1930s when the invasive Atlantic sea lamprey, which had gained access to Lake Erie in the early 1900s, made its way into Lakes Michigan and Supe-

Patricia Armenio

Rainbow smelt, (Osmerus mordax).

rior where it decimated native lake trout populations over the next 30 years. With the top lake predator diminished, the smelt population exploded.

In recent years, rainbow smelt populations have declined in the Great Lakes due to predators at the top and changes at the bottom of the food web. Vander Zanden notes that “from the 1960s onwards the Great Lakes were stocked with non-native salmon, many from the Pacific, such as coho and chinook. These also feed on smelt, and were and are heavily stocked for anglers. So their populations have been quite high, which contributed to the smelt decline.”

Vander Zanden goes on to explain that the increasing population of these two invasive mussels “stripped the [plankton] productivity of the open water zone, undermining the base of the food chain that supported forage fish like smelt. So smelt have been hit from above and below.”

Sharon Moen, Food-Fish Outreach Coordinator at Wisconsin Sea Grant, also reports that “cannibalism by older smelt, spring precipitation influencing stream spawning habitats, and hungry lake trout and salmon have taken a toll on the smelt populations.” The last year the smelt harvest was big enough to cause excitement in Lake Michigan, says Moen, was 2018. Ironically, two invasive species from Eastern Europe may have contributed to the decline of smelt in Lake Michigan.

When talking about the decline in rainbow smelt populations, Moen explains that it also depends on which lake you’re talking about. In Lake Superior, she says, the reduced rainbow smelt population reflects the success of native lake trout recovery, which is a good thing. “Lake trout eat smelt, but lake trout numbers were exceedingly low when smelt became a noticeable part of the Lake Superior fishery in the 1940s.” In the decades that followed, the smelt population grew, and so did the popularity of smelting and smelt fries.

Though Lake Superior still has a higher density of smelt than the other lakes, it too has seen a decline that reflects more than just the comeback of lake trout. “The smelt runs are not as heavy as they used to be,” says Bill Bodin of Bodin Fisheries in Bayfield. “They’ve changed their spawning behavior by not running up rivers to spawn, choosing to spawn in the lake bottom instead.” The commercial

availability of smelt in the Chequamegon Bay area has also been affected by recent DNR restrictions on the use of pound nets in the waters south of Bayfield, Bodin reports. Those restrictions essentially eliminated the kind of large commercial harvests of the 1970s to early 2000s. Smelt in that part of Lake Superior must now be hand caught in seines, and this has reduced the amount of smelt harvested.

Moen reports that in 1979, “Lake Superior’s abundant smelt population crashed for an unknown reason (some experts suspect the fungi-like parasite Glugea hertwigi)… (and) effective sea lamprey control and harvest restrictions allowed lake trout numbers to swell, thereby continuing to suppress smelt populations.” Unfortunately smelt have also moved into many inland Wisconsin lakes in recent years, notes Vander Zanden, causing “big problems for populations of walleye, yellow perch, and whitefish.” The smelt prey on newly hatched perch and walleye, and generally compete with these native fish populations.

“The time when smelt were so abundant was a time of great disturbance and alteration in the Great Lakes food web,” explains Titus Seilheimer, Fisheries Specialist at Wisconsin Sea Grant. “It’s a species that has cultural value as a food fish and it’s a prey fish for predators, but smelt are also predators on eggs and fry, so they have impacts on native species and sportfish.” “Ecologically,” he concludes, “it’s probably better to have fewer smelt in the lakes.” Nonetheless, an appetite for smelt remains throughout the state, driven in part perhaps by nostalgia and in part by scarcity.

Smelt fries have suffered the past three years due to the pandemic, but Bill Bodin reports that orders have been coming in steadily this spring. And you can still purchase smelt in April in almost every grocery store near the shores of Lake Superior, says Moen.

A traditional smelt fry is typically all-you-can-eat breaded and fried whole smelt with such sides as coleslaw, baked beans, french fries, potato salad, chips, and bread or dinner rolls. Smelt also appear in season at select restaurants around the state.

Kristin Hueneke, executive chef at Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee, has also noticed the decline in the availability of smelt. “Around 2020 it became harder and harder to find fresh and even frozen raw smelt. We took it off the menu because I couldn’t guarantee we would get it in stock.”

“I had smelt on our menu because it was appreciated by our old-school fish fry guests,” says Hueneke. “I would get told over and over about a grandfather who loved our smelt and that we prepared it the way they grew up eating it.” She admits though, “I personally don’t enjoy the tiny headless fellas, but I understand the appeal of a food that evokes memories of meals with your family or childhood.”

Moen’s take on eating smelt is more complicated: “Though they are not my favorite fish to eat because I’m not a fan of deep fried anything,” she allows that, “under the right circumstances and with a pint of beer, a plateful of fried smelt can be, as I like to say, food of the gods. Think of them as fish french fries and you won’t even notice the bones.”

Smelting, I learned all those years ago, is a different kind of fishing, one that involves a certain element of risk. It’s out towards the edge, if not right on it. When we arrived at Lake Michigan for my first smelt run, the parking lot was full. People were

Under the right circumstances and with a pint of beer, a plateful of fried smelt can be food of the gods.

standing around bonfires on the beach. Cases of cheap beer spilled open in the sand. The night air was cold enough that there was no need for ice. People were wading into the waves along the shore, migrating from the bonfires to the lake and back. I soon realized why. It doesn’t take long to get chilled standing in Lake Michigan in March.

There are several ways to catch smelt. There are dip nets, which are like landing nets, but with finer mesh netting. Seines are long nets pulled by two or more people on either end. And drop nets, used off bridges over the rivers and streams running into Lake Michigan, are weighted square nets dropped into the water with ropes, then pulled up once they hit bottom. That night, we used dip nets. I walked into the lake to try my hand. When I lifted the net, it was teeming with smelt, a roiling mess of flashing silver. That’s when I saw the appeal of smelting.

You don’t have to know much about fishing to catch smelt. And there’s nothing like a wave of cold lake water over the top of your waders to make you feel awake and alive beneath the night sky with the white noise of the big lake’s waves rolling in, the crackling of burning driftwood, and the sounds of people yelling, laughing, and music from boomboxes drifting from the beach.

Later, the cleaning process was explained to me: you’re either a scissor man or a gutter. The former cuts off the heads with scissors and cuts open the belly for the gutter. I opted for the scissors. Smelt are not filleted or de-boned, as they and their bones are so small. The cleaned smelt are breaded and deep-fried whole like a french fry, scales, skin, bones and all. In some places removing the heads is optional, and I’ve heard smelt referred to as “fries with eyes.” There’s an element of risk, I suppose, in eating whole fish, particularly ones that are looking back at you. But a more serious risk has emerged in regards to eating smelt.

In early 2021, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued a PFAS-based fish consumption advisory, changing recommended Lake Superior rainbow smelt consumption from an unrestricted amount to one meal per month. The DNR had found elevated levels of PFAS in rainbow smelt in Lake Superior. PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a group of man-made chemicals that has been used for decades in such products as non-stick cookware, fast food wrappers, stain-resistant sprays, and

Beer Battered Smelt

INGREDIENTS

2-3 servings

1½ Cup flour

1½ tsp Lawry’s seasoned salt

1 pinch of cayenne pepper

1 tsp Old Bay seasoning

¼ tsp garlic salt

1 dash oregano

12 oz beer, Pilsner style or one lighter in flavor

1 lb smelt (24 to 32 fish), cleaned if available

½ Cup flour

DIRECTIONS

Mix the 1½ cups flour, Lawry’s salt, cayenne, garlic salt, oregano, and Old Bay seasoning in a bowl until combined well. Slowly whisk in the beer. Whisk thoroughly to avoid clumps from forming. Set in fridge to chill. Lightly dust smelt with the ½ cup flour. Shake off any excess.

Heat a large, cast-iron or other cooking vessel with hot oil to 350 degrees. A vessel with tall sides would be ideal to reduce the amount of splattering oil.

Once all the fish has been dusted, submerge one by one into the beer batter. Lay some paper towels down, or have your batter close to the oil to avoid a mess.

Carefully place battered smelt into fryer in small batches and let cook 4 to 5 minutes, turning, until a deep golden brown.

Place fish on paper toweling and season with salt. Serve with lemon wedges and tartar sauce.

Source: Zorba Paster On Your Health, Wisconsin Public Radio.

Stephan Shambert

Fried Lake Superior smelt platter.

fire-fighting foam. Surprisingly, the DNR found that PFAS levels in other species in Lake Superior such as bloater chub, lake herring, lake whitefish, and lake trout, did not warrant a consumption advisory change. Jake Vander Zanden admits he was surprised that smelt would show higher levels of PFAS than more predatory fishes. Sean Strom, wildlife toxicologist for the Wisconsin DNR, reported, “To be honest, we really don’t know why it’s not showing up as high in other fish, or why it’s just smelt at these higher levels.” Regardless, eating fish provides a range of health benefits and remains an important part of a healthy diet. Fish and other seafood are the major sources of healthful omega-3 fatty acids and are rich in nutrients such as vitamin D and selenium, high in protein, and low in the saturated fat found in red meat. The American Heart Association recommends that everyone eat fish twice a week. So it makes sense to consider both risks and benefits, and to consult local advisories about the kinds and amounts of fish you should eat.

So whether you’re someone who agrees that risk is part of good eating and good food, or you’re just looking for a traditional fried smelt dinner, you might still be in luck. As we prepared to go to press, Bearcats in Green Bay were selling fresh Lake Michigan smelt

while supplies last. At Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee, Kristin Hueneke reports that she’s ordered smelt for a 2023 Lent special and expects to have it on the menu on Fridays throughout Lent.

I recently found fried Lake Superior smelt on the menu at Gates and Brovi in Madison and went there after work one Friday. The place was packed, but my wife and I scored seats at the bar, and placed our order: a basket of fried smelt and two shrimp poboys. The smelt platter looked appetizing—a generous portion of lightly breaded french-fry-sized fish, as I remembered them, with tartar sauce and cocktail sauce. I dug in.

I have to admit, we did not finish the fried smelt, even though I am usually not one to leave food on my plate. The smelt were not bad, but they were a little fishy for my taste. Emily, our bartender, said she liked them, but added that she also likes anchovies on pizza. And I have to admit, despite trying not to, I was thinking about those PFAS chemicals too, so perhaps my taste for risk has diminished. The shrimp poboys were delicious, but that’s another story and another cautionary tale, if it was imported, farmed shrimp from Asia or Central America, as shrimp available in Wisconsin most likely is.

As far as I know, Anthony Bourdain never went smelting—though he did apparently once eat bocarones, a Spanish take on fried smelt, at a tapas bar in Granada. I like to think he would have appreciated an old-fashioned Wisconsin smelt fry, with its elements of serendipity, camaraderie, and risk. My memory of smelting is blurry, due to the passage of time and the effects of that most powerful of seasonings, nostalgia. Back at the bar at Gates and Brovi, I pop one last smelt in my mouth and raise my beer to Tony, wherever he is, hoping that perhaps the smelt are running there.

Christopher Chambers returned home to Wisconsin in 2015 after a long sojourn in the South. He’s a pescetarian, a martial artist, an editor, and the author of three books, including Kind of Blue, a collection of stories. He lives in Madison with his wife, an old dog, and a couple backyard chickens.

Brian Beckwith

WORKING ON THE BIAS THE FINE ART OF FIBER

Working on the Bias features ten artists who demonstrate the diversity and expressive potential of fiber.

OPENING PARTY

April 22|2:00–4:00

ON VIEW

April 22–July 9

Museum of Wisconsin Art West Bend|wisconsinart.org

Generously sponsored by

Jean Stamsta, UT (TRIPOD), c. 1971

Nicholas Gulig at home, December 2022.

WRITE A LINE THAT IS OUR STATE: ON NICHOLAS GULIG, POET LAUREATE OF WISCONSIN

BY NICKOLAS BUTLER

The afternoon light is failing as Nicholas Gulig and I march through knee-high snow on the sixteen acres of land my wife and I own south of Eau Claire. The same land where, years ago, Gulig and his wife Fon were married. He is holding a beautiful literary journal called Neck , while I cradle a Remington twelve-gauge shotgun. The publishers of Neck have informed him that if he documents the destruction of their phone-book-sized journal, a new copy will be sent to him, gratis. Because Gulig and I have been friends since middle school, he knows that this variety of artful chicanery is right up my alley.

Colin Crowley

He sets the journal upright on an old wooden wire spool, propping it with snow. We mark off about fifteen paces and commence shooting.

The first blast does surprisingly little damage. The copper birdshot does not completely penetrate the thick, hand-made pages, destroying about three quarters of the journal. But the second shot does the trick. The journal is blown off its perch, landing about ten feet downhill in deep snow. We retrieve the journal and fire again. With each shot, the publication is reduced, papery bits scattered on the snow. A word here or there. Better, more organic, more spontaneous than any refrigerator magnet poetry. In the imprint of a frozen footprint there might be a fleck of paper with the word wolf Blowing gently across the snow, between wasted stalks of ragweed and goldenrod, the words rose or lusty or oleanders or razorback . After pumping eight shells through the Remington, we take a cardboard box and collect what remains of the third issue of Neck. Later, in my kitchen, we place the spent shotgun shells in the box as well, for good measure, before Nicholas Gulig, the tenth Poet Laureate of Wisconsin mails the works to Austin, Texas.

Thenews of Gulig’s prestigious appointment came as no surprise to me, rather as a well-timed confirmation of a life dedicated to poetry and language. I can remember, with great clarity, certain moments from our childhood and teenage years, when Gulig was already developing into a poet, when he would quite organically proclaim, “It’s just me up on this cliff. Me and Jesus,” or when he’d read from his account of traveling to the American Southwest as an unaccompanied teenager using the lyrics of a Tom Waits song to describe the stars over the Mojave Desert as a “pinprick sky.” At fifteen he was voraciously reading Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Rimbaud, and Jack Kerouac, listening to Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, and cultivating a sort of personal fashion that was a blend of punkrock aesthetics and hobo-chic. He would wear favored items of clothing until the fabric and stitches simply expired. Nicholas Gulig is the opposite of the Instagram poets of our age. This is a man who has been quietly living his passion and organically honing his craft since childhood and who now finds himself summiting the heights of American letters. Still, he is characteristically modest about the honor. Gulig explains,

Even though I feel like I should resist feeling this way or that I’d like to think of myself as not needing exterior validation—this is incredibly validating. I’ve been doing this since we were kids, 13 years old or something. And thirty-some years later you get validated. It validates all that work and time and effort. It also feels validating of all the effort other people have put into me and my work. My teachers, for example. It validates the work and attention my peers have put into me and my work. And the sacrifices of my parents. Their encouragement of me being a poet, which I imagine must have been tough. Like, how is our kid going to put food on the table? But I think it’s also an opportunity to give back what I’ve been given. I get to spend two years thinking publicly and talking publicly and hopefully introducing a lot of people to poems and poets in a way I’m hoping cultivates a relationship for them with those poems and poets. Which is something my teachers did for me. They opened up a world for me which radically changed my life and altered my

In the imprint of a frozen footprint there might be a fleck of paper with the word wolf. Blowing gently across the snow, between wasted stalks of ragweed and goldenrod, the words rose or lusty or oleanders or razorback.

lifepath. I get to do for others what has been done for me. You don’t want to pull the ladder up behind you. You want to pay it forward.

In truth, Gulig has been paying it forward long before he became Wisconsin’s Poet Laureate. After completing his PhD at the University of Denver in 2016, Gulig moved with his wife and daughter to Fort Atkinson and accepted a position at UW–Whitewater, where he is now an Associate Professor. “It would be one thing if Nick were just a gosh-wow poet of unswerving brilliance—which he is—but I’ve been fortunate enough to work with him for the last six years and have become uniquely acquainted with his commitment as a teacher,” says Gulig’s colleague, the acclaimed essayist Barrett Swanson. “This is a person who has around 75 students at any given time and who will meet with each one individually twice over a single semester to discuss the hiccups in their writing. That Nick somehow finds the time and cerebral wattage to generate his own award-winning poems and to be so meaningfully engaged in the lives of his family—not to mention the broader literary community— is a sacrifice that can’t help but stop you in your tracks. And yet he is a person who is as open-hearted and eloquent and thoughtful as his poetry is. You’re ashamed to have a lazy idea around him. It’s a great fortune of my life to count him as a friend.”

The poet Jane Wong, who was a classmate of Gulig’s at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop from 2008-2010, shared similar sentiments. “Since we met at Iowa, Nick has been one of my closest poetry readers. He’s immensely generous, kind, and also hilarious. And if you ever doubt the power of poetry, he will remind you of the wild garden that a poem can grow. Nick’s poems are ones that I return to like a hawk, with precision, curiosity, and layers of relation. I’m so thrilled that he is now the Poet Laureate of Wisconsin, though I can’t say I’m surprised. This is a role he was meant for, spreading love for poetry across each field, town, city, heart.”

Teaching is clearly a foundational ethic of Gulig’s, an acknowledgement that language is a communal experience and a generational transference of what it means to be human. He is quick to credit his own mentors and professors. “If I had to point to a single teacher, it would be Joanna Klink at the University of Montana (where Gulig studied from 2002-2007, earning his Bachelor’s degree). Even though she wasn’t technically my first poetry teacher, she was my first prolonged teacher. I took every class of hers during my five years at Montana. She was one of the first teachers who really believed in my potential. When I was an undergraduate, she allowed me to take graduate workshops. There’s a

Colin Crowley

Books by Nicholas Gulig.

big difference between an undergraduate workshop and a graduate workshop. In most undergraduate workshops there’s two or three students that are very talented. But a graduate workshop is filled with those people, and that lights a fire under you. That forces you to take your writing more seriously. You have to put everything into it. So I basically had three graduate experiences. She was the first person I wrote to when I heard I was going to be the Poet Laureate of Wisconsin. Her books are always right next to me when I’m writing. There’s not really ever a poem I write that I don’t wonder what she would think of what I was working on.”

In an email, Klink writes of Gulig, “Nick is that rare, compassionate person who writes extraordinary, compassionate poems. He is brilliant, self-deprecating, humble, hopeful, passionate, and wideopen to life. I wish I could sit in on his classes. Whatever he does as Poet Laureate, it’s sure to be remarkable.”

Gulig’s work is fragile, ephemeral, beautiful. Like an Andy Goldsworthy installation, there is the sense that his words, his images, his line breaks—all of it coheres on the page and in the mind with the delicacy of hoarfrost or a final-throe blossom just before a storm. His poetry never takes the easy route, never allows itself to become a blunt force instrument of sentimentality or emotion, but instead strives to—like cold, heat, water, wind, or perhaps lightning—become the space between emotion and perfect articulation. In this way, his poems are elemental, naturalistic, a mature expression of his Wisconsin roots.

“Growing up in Wisconsin,” Gulig explains, “means growing up outdoors. I grew up camping and fishing. I grew up driving around the countryside in high school, cultivating a relationship with the landscape. And especially in my early poems, that landscape was something I wanted to engage. Something inspiring. Something I wanted to pay tribute to. So if my early work was pastoral, it was because I was raised this way.”

Gulig explains that the Wisconsin of his youth “… felt isolated. Maybe that was illusory, but that’s how I felt in the early 90s. It felt like art was happening somewhere else, culture was happening somewhere else. So if I wanted to participate in art, I had to make it, and make it with my friends. To the extent that art and culture were missing from where I was from, I needed to be a maker. We had to make the music ourselves or write the poems ourselves. That DIY ethic was instilled in me at an early age by two different ends of the cultural spectrum, a rural Wisconsin mentality and an urban punk mentality. You know, making chapbooks at Kinko’s.”

The nascent Eau Claire arts scene (pioneered and still led by the likes of John Hildebrand, Allan Servoss, Max Garland, Michael Perry, Bruce Taylor, et al.) was finding its youthful footing in the 90s. Future Grammy Award-winning musicians like Justin Vernon and Geoff Keezer, and sought-after record producers like Ryan Olson, plus award-winning writers, artists, and a lengthy list of extraordinarily talented musicians, most of whom graduated from Eau Claire Memorial High School in an eight-year window, and most of whom were, and remain, good friends. These young artists were orbiting one another, walking with one another in easy teenage ways: partying, sharing music, meals, books, and poetry.

As Gulig explains, Eau Claire is uniquely positioned to experience the Twin Cities art scene and the bucolic Wisconsin countryside. The same young artists who were venturing into Minneapolis to

Amor Fati

This is how I’ve loved: dark sky, bruise of wind like language slipping into grief— light, the drifting edge of listening. Here, where I am other than and after—always after—the incandescent wake of every mercy

I’ve been given clears the myriad complexities of ache, my only ardor, error like the bluest harbor, the shoreline shaking in the inconsistent weather of your name.

Nicholas Gulig

watch shows at First Avenue were also canoeing the Eau Claire and Chippewa Rivers; they were as likely to be found backpacking the Porcupine Mountains of northern Michigan as they were to be seen at the sparsely attended punk shows at UWEC’s Council Fire Room. There was a kind of moxy in the air at that time; it wasn’t that there were expectations or visions of success, or even a track record or role models. It was instead a kind of cool hutzpah, a confidence that arose from a safe, middle-class, Midwestern upbringing and excellent public schools and educators.

Even if the Chippewa Valley of west-central Wisconsin did not have a particularly illustrious history of art, it seems destined to. People around the world now pay good money to see musical performances by Eau Claire Memorial alums of the 1990s who once could be found playing pickup basketball at the YMCA or at sweaty, red Solo-cup soirees off Water Street. It is difficult to illustrate the amount of young talent coming of age in Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls at that time, and Gulig’s recent ascendancy is proof positive that much of it is still being discovered.

Colin Crowley

Nicholas Gulig at work, December 2022.

“I think that my work has changed a lot over the years. I think that what I’m most interested in as a poet is finding ways for different types of languages to cohabitate or coexist in the linguistic landscape of the poem. What I mean by that is, different types of languages, originating from different kinds of dictionaries. Take a poetic dictionary full of roses, meadows, larks, et cetera. But there’s also a critical dictionary, you know. The language of theory, the language of music, or philosophy or political science. In a poem I want to explore the extent that these separate vocabularies might contribute to or challenge each other. I want a poem to find its source in as many vocabularies or dictionaries as possible.”

This curiosity, this desire to work across boundaries, is also evident in Gulig’s vision for his time as Poet Laureate. “I want to put together a resource of writers living in Wisconsin that relates to a poem that happens outside of Wisconsin. Why that poem is open to them. Little essays about that. And then, writers outside of the state writing and reflecting about Wisconsin writers. So you’d have two vantages, two perspectives. Looking out of Wisconsin, and looking into Wisconsin. And if you can put those two things together, it creates a picture of the influenced and influencers. A kind of resource for high school and college teachers teaching poetry.”

Later that night—after gathering up the gunshot remains of Neck magazine, long after the winter sun had collapsed over the western horizon—Gulig, his wife Fon (whom he met in Thailand as a Fulbright Scholar), Grammy Award-winning producer Brian Joseph, Joseph’s dad, Norm, and I meet at a new restaurant in Eau Claire called The Good Wives. Gulig, Joseph, and I are all members of a vinyl record club (mostly of Eau Claire Memorial alums) where Gulig serves as Spiritual Advisor, a role that calls for him to read a poem towards the beginning of each meeting. His invocations are often high-water emotional moments of the evening, and even though we gather on Zoom (the club began during the first year of the COVID epidemic), it is easy to see, or even feel, the membership’s reactions to the material he has chosen. At times, these invocations have produced tears, and recently, after the reading of an Auden poem, an unprecedented encore.

We are the last table in the restaurant. The chefs and waiters are standing by the bar, arms crossed, waiting for us to leave. When we do go outside into the cold and splinter off into our separate directions, Gulig and his wife drive a short distance to the Third Ward, a beautiful neighborhood not far from the campus of UW–Eau Claire where Gulig’s father, Art, worked for many decades, to where his mother still lives in his childhood house. I imagine Gulig parking in the driveway, and walking inside that house, where on so many weekend nights, I was invited for sleepovers, where we whiled away hours talking about music, girls, and our futures. Our mothers used to rejoice in the fact that our names were the same—even our middle names—so when they inevitably screamed “Nick!” we both came running, most times with our friend Nik Novak as well. So much time has flowed between those memories and now. And yet, here we are. Dreaming the same dreams we did so many years before.

If there is a defining characteristic of the artists who have risen from the Eau Claire area, it is loyalty . A loyalty and commitment to place, community, and friendship. Nicholas Gulig’s poetry is a reflection of that ethos. His poems celebrate the landscape of

Wisconsin, the beloved ghosts of his past, the friends that fill his evenings with laughter and music, his students and colleagues at UW–Whitewater, and the young family (daughters aged four and eleven) he is raising in Fort Atkinson, home of course, to another great Wisconsin poet, Lorine Niedecker.

In one sense, a state is just a line drawn upon a map that defines a space, a line guided by rivers and lakes, informed by other lines, older lines representing identities, feuds, established territories. The line and name of the line does not much matter. What matters, is how the space is filled. What importance we give to that space. For some, a state line is nothing, a border they drive across en route to someplace else. But for Nicholas Gulig, the line that defines Wisconsin contains a home, a place that has inspired and guided his pen, like a familiar hand.

Nickolas Butler is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Shotgun Lovesongs , The Hearts of Men, Little Faith, and Godspeed, and the story collection Beneath the Bonfire. A graduate of UW–Madison and the Iowa Writers Workshop, he lives with his wife and two children on sixteen acres of land in rural Wisconsin.

The news of Gulig’s prestigious appointment came as no surprise… but as confirmation of a life dedicated to poetry and language.

Calliopsis nebraskensis, Male specimen.

THROUGH THE FIRE, A BOUNTY OF BEES

BY CHRISTIE TAYLOR

At nine a.m. on a perfect late summer day in a series of perfect late summer days, the temperature is starting to climb from a 65-degree low, the dew point is low, and the sky is merry with clouds. As the day goes on, the chirruping crickets will be joined by whining cicadas and the high might touch 80 degrees. It is a good day to go for a hike at southeastern Wisconsin’s Lulu Lake Preserve, and to learn about preserving biodiversity.

Cut through by the Mukwonago River, situated inside a triangle defined by the towns of Eagle, Mukwonago, and East Troy, this gem of a spot sits at the southern tip of the sprawling glacierformed ridges of the Kettle Moraine. Lulu Lake is a 95-acre kettle lake, formed when a great berg of glacial ice—isolated on the landscape and then buried under sand and rock debris—slowly melted, creating a kettle-shaped and then water-filled depression in the earth. Despite its soft, muddy bottom, the lake has water so pure that even delicate wild rice thrives there—uncommon this far south. The lake is seated amidst a bounty of preserved land, 632 acres of which have been managed and restored by The Nature Conservancy’s Wisconsin arm. Once an ice-harvesting site for Milwaukee’s beer breweries, later the site of a Boys and Girls’ club, and at one point slated to be the location of a convention center, these acres are now home to a precious 50-odd acres of rare oak openings, of 500 remaining in the state, a fraction of the millions of openings that once sprawled across the southern half of Wisconsin. Characterized by a park-like appearance, oak openings—also called oak savannas—consist of wide-branching oaks scattered over native prairie grasslands in varying degrees of density.

It’s bloom time for the prairie plants of Lake Lulu’s oak openings, even as the sumacs are starting to redden in anticipation of fall. Look down and you’re almost certain to see flowers: purples and pinks, lavenders, bright golden yellows, and a dozen variations of white. A black swallowtail butterfly greets us as we get out of the car. Bobbing among the grass are bees, at least half a dozen different colors and sizes and kinds, drifting from flower to flower.

Those bees are why I’m here.

In Wisconsin, like elsewhere, bee populations are declining. There are many causes, including parasites and environmental pollutants—particularly a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. But also to blame is the replacement of the original, complex ecosystems with monocultures of corn, soybeans, and other crops. Research by University of Wisconsin biologist Jeremy Hemberger in 2021 revealed that agriculture has not only expanded to cover more land, but the crops have also become less diverse in the last 150 years. With the loss of diversity of crop species has come an accompanying decline of the Midwest’s native bumblebees.

But a casual observer wouldn’t see that on this August morning. Laura Rericha-Anchor is a wildlife biologist and botanist with the Forest Preserves of Cook County, Illinois, and has spent the last twenty years immersed in the ecologies of the Chicago region, which includes southeastern Wisconsin. In 2021, in a count of bees and other pollinators on preserved lands, she turned up some good news. On the pockets of land she surveyed, she was finding rare bees. And of all such preserves in southeastern Wisconsin that she visited, Lulu Lake had by far the most diversity of native bees.

Past research had previously identified 106 total bee species calling Lulu Lake home. Rericha-Anchor found every single one of them. In contrast, she found only 28 species (out of 152 known) at the site with the next highest count, a portion of the Kettle Moraine Oak Opening State Natural Area.

“I got numerous records (sightings)…things I had not yet collected in the Kettle Moraine area,” she says. “So I knew it was

just an incredible area.” When she talks about bees, you may picture a honeybee, the domestic Apis mellifera, with its golden-brown striped abdomen and intensely social hive lifestyle. The honeybee was imported from Europe in the 17th century, arriving on a continent already rich with pollinating bees, moths, wasps, and beetles. The majority of native bees don’t live in hives; they’re solitary, often small, living in small nests or tunnels, and coming together only to mate.

Many of the bees Rericha-Anchor identified at Lulu Lake do not have common names to accompany the Latin, an ignominy of species that have held little interest for the nonscientific public. But their relationships with the land, and the plants on that land, are well documented and make clear their dependence on a well-conserved prairie or oak opening.

Andrena uvulariae is a small, fuzzy bee with chocolate brown coloring and subtle stripes. It likes bellwort, a small pendulous yellow flower that’s close to the ground and that thrives in the Kettle Moraine.

“I’m talking about tens, hundreds of thousands of plants–an unbelievable weft of blooming,” Rericha-Anchor says. She describes her arrival at the Lulu Lake Preserve, during the bellwort flowering season, as an almost sublime experience of turning a corner and seeing a hill in full sunlight, surrounded by woodland, and covered in yellow bellwort blooms. Within three minutes she had trapped (and shortly thereafter released) Andrena uvulariae , a bee never before recorded in Wisconsin.

Another native bee, Lasioglossum nelumbonis , relies on the pollen of water lilies, which are abundant off the shore of the lake. It requires sandy soils for nesting and is rare throughout the Chicago region. Finding two females during her survey of Lulu Lake, Rericha-Anchor says, “was an amazing surprise.” While it relies on a wetland plant for pollen, it forages for nectar from prairie plants, making it reliant on a unique combination of wetland and prairie.

Other exciting and rare findings at Lulu Lake Preserve include these species:

• Calliopsis nebraskensis, a rare, pollen-preferring bee that lives in sandy habitats, including dry prairie soils. Where it occurs in Wisconsin, the bee has a strong preference for Verbena stricta, or hoary verbena.

• Kincaid’s cellophane bee, Colletes kincaidii, depends on the pollen of leadplant, Amorpha canescens, and purple prairie clover, Dalea purpura

• The small miner bee, Pseudopanurgus parvus, is rare in our region, and depends on remnant oak savannas and prairies. In Wisconsin, it occurs only in the Kettle Moraine region.

Thisremarkable diversity is in part due to one thing that makes the Lulu Lake Preserve different from many spaces like it. The land here has been managed by fire for more than thirty years.

This is why I’m at Lulu Lake, walking through hip-high grass, collecting three or four different kinds of burrs and hitchhikers on my pants, swooping down at flowers to see who’s visiting them. Brian Miner, The Nature Conservancy’s land steward for southeast Wisconsin, is here to show me the land, the flowers, the bees, and to tell me the story of fire.

It starts with the oak openings, or oak savannas, now reduced to less than one hundredth of one percent of their former glory in Wisconsin. Wisconsin naturalist John Curtis, writing in 1959, defined an oak savanna as a complex of different ecosystems, ranging from a prairie scattered with oak trees grown uncrowded by their fellows to a woodland of oaks with sunlight peeking through the canopy.

Ecosystems like this don’t have stark dividing lines: think instead of a spectrum ranging from an open prairie with no trees, to a forest with a tight, sun-proof canopy. An oak savanna begins when you add a single oak tree to the prairie, and it ends when the land is about 50 percent covered with them. Above 50 percent brings you into a sunny, open-canopied woodland. As the trees crowd closer and the canopy grows, you find yourself in a true forest, where the shade helps retain moisture and cooler temperatures.

“You can’t draw a line and say this is an oak savanna,” Miner says. “It really is transitional.”

It’s this spectrum of different conditions that allows for so much life to flourish, he explains. There’s more opportunity for rare species of flowers to exist in these areas, and also the unique bees that need them. This is particularly true for what are known as specialists: animals with very specific food needs, who cannot subsist on anything else.

It’s not just the oak openings themselves that make this place so species-rich, according to Rericha-Anchor. The majority of the Lulu Lake State Natural Area sits on what’s called remnant

landscape. Much of it has been untouched, or only minimally disturbed, by post-colonial human activities like mining or logging, agriculture or housing. This means the native plant communities are mostly intact, even where sparse. In addition, the soil itself is whole—it retains the structured complexity of organic matter layered among eroded rock, knit together with microbial species that help dead things decay and help funnel vital nutrients to plant roots.

“The bees can’t be present unless the landscape, the soils are intact,” Rericha-Anchor says.

The difference between a remnant and a restoration—where humans attempt an approximation of the natural order—can be significant. Some species can be found only in the remnants. And at Lulu Lake, the majority of the bee species Rericha-Anchor found were in the remnant, not in the restored prairie and woodland.

“A remnant is the clearing house for biodiversity,” she says. “It’s the template, the launching point. The composition of the remnant was the baseline of species that Native Americans preserved and sustained with regular burnings over thousands of years.

Oak savannas, which once covered much of the state and are now critically endangered, relied on fire, both naturally occurring wildfire and the intentional burning practices of indigenous peoples, suppressed by European settlers upon their arrival.

Miner shows me an area that has burned comparatively little, only eight times in the last thirty years. It’s crowded with small saplings a couple meters tall and low, thick shrubs. It seems unfin-

Emily Mills, The Nature Conservancy

Lulu Lake, oak savanna burned area.

ished, disorganized, without structure, and I realize there are few flowers here, despite the season.

The unburned land makes a hard, unsubtle transition between forest and prairie, offering few habitats between full shade and full sun, few places for a diversity of life.

Miner also shows me invasive species, like buckthorn and honeysuckle, shrubs that thrive in the absence of a healthy ecosystem. Oriental bittersweet, a woody vine with striking red and orange berries, climbs other plants and smothers them, the weight of its coils able to uproot trees entirely.

Elsewhere, in a spot that’s been burned twenty times in the last thirty years, the difference is stark. The oaks thin out from the woodlands to the prairie in a spacing that is elegant. The transition is softer, and there are more varied zones of light and soil moisture, and accompanying gradations of plant communities. There’s no shrubby undergrowth, and many flowers. The oaks have grown for decades with no other trees impeding them, and have the characteristic sprawling branches and massive crowns of leaves for which prairie oaks are known.

Already, a year and a half since the 2021 fire season, young aspen trees are sprouting from the burned land, their root systems producing clones that assault the prairie. Aspens are a native species, but in a land untouched by fire, they quickly strangle the oaks, absorb the sunlight, and destroy the oak savanna ecosystem.

And so, land managers like Miner burn. It’s the easiest way to clear these woody invaders, bring sunlight back to the oak openings, and ensure the prairie remains a habitat for oaks. Burning also makes crucial nutrients easier for plants to access, thus nourishing the entire ecosystem and encouraging flowers to bloom. For example, the roots of the common pale-leaved sunflower, Helianthus strumosus , a perennial, can send up five separate plants capable of blooming every year. But if the land hasn’t burned recently, he says, the sunflower may launch only three stems, and some may be sterile, unblooming.

In August 2022, the land has recovered from its 2021 burn. Historically, Miner says, this land saw fire every three to five years. But now the burn process starts anew every year. “We need to burn more frequently to make up for lost time,” he explains. As a result, every parcel of land has both a long-term fire strategy goal and a specific burn plan for a particular year.

There are three factors Miner’s team considers according to what outcomes they want to achieve: the residence time, or how long an area is burning; the intensity or heat of the burn; and the flame height, which determines how high up a plant might be burned.

They burn in the spring, typically in March, in a window of weeks when the conditions for favorable wind, dry weather and still-dormant vegetation usually, though don’t always, align. Though planning begins a year or more in advance, the burn may never happen. The spring of 2022 was first too wet, and then too windy, for a burn at Lulu Lake. So the burn remains on hold until 2023.

“Fire is a big labor project, because you’re not just lighting a match,” says Miner. “You’re also directing it.” Depending on the acreage of the desired burn, this may require anywhere from six people for a small burn unit up to 12 to 15 for a larger parcel. The team must manage the smoke, especially near roads or people’s homes. Wind from the wrong direction can derail a day’s plans. And

Emily Mills, The Nature Conservancy

Brian Miner showing height of charring on a tree.

they have to keep the fire contained to the precise square acreage planned for. The team uses ATVs, UTVs, and trucks to transport crew and pump water to define the edges of the burn and to put out any stray flames.

Team members light the edges with a specially designed gasoline canister. For bringing fire to the interior of a parcel where it may be too dangerous to walk, a PSD (plastic sphere dispenser) gun propels small spheres of highly flammable magnesium-permanganate into the forest, or into wetlands from a canoe or kayak.

Skilled manipulation of fire allows land managers like Miner to target particularly dense stands of brush with more intense waves of flame, while keeping most of the burn at a lower intensity that is easier to control. A backing fire, for example, is a fire that spreads into, or against the wind, a fire that is low-intensity, and low-flamed, but with a longer residence time. A longer-sitting fire can kill the roots of small shrubs, for example, without burning as hot.

But sometimes it can be useful to set head fires—fires that run with the wind—to tackle a particularly pernicious stand of buckthorn, the kind of plant that will take years of repeated efforts to finally eradicate.

“If I can top-kill with fire, then we get native grasses to grow, and it burns a little easier the next time,” Miner says.

The ideal burn plan is one that allows the broadest range of weather conditions to avoid having to cancel the burn, while still being able to both control the fire and have valuable results for the ecosystem.

The goal is not to singe the entire acreage equally, but rather to allow for less- and more-intensely burned patches, as well as occasional spots untouched by fire. In combination with the wind direction and speed, and the manipulations of the human team, all

the land’s variations—its shade and sun, moist and dry soil, fastburning grass and slow-burning trees, even something as seemingly small as an up- or downhill slope—will also shape the fire.

Miner takes me to an oak tree that stands with a few others on a small rise. It looks healthy, but it’s been marked by fire from the previous spring. There’s a black mark on one side of the trunk— charring. On the other side of the tree is a wide welt in the trunk—a shallow, smooth gash with additional charring, where the bark caught fire and was burned away entirely.

“This is known as a cat face, or burn scar,” Miner says. The tree will likely bear the burn scar the rest of its life, even through the layers of future growth.

These scars and charrings appear only about two feet from the ground, indicating a lower-intensity fire. A few hundred meters away, on other trees, the charring is about twice as high, indicating the fire there was much more intense. Every fire also includes intentionally unburned spots, called refugia, for insects. Early in the year insects are less mobile, more likely to be grubs and nymphs that need shelter from the inferno in order to survive.

Pyrodiversity begets biodiversity, Miner says, and Lulu Lake has biodiversity. Researchers doing plant surveys in the last ten years have found between 140 and 181 different plants in the oak openings and woodlands. In the dry prairies, more than 100; in the wetlands, more than 150. Some species were found in all three habitats. Over 300 plant species thrive in this relatively small parcel of land, including one endangered species, two threatened, and six of special concern in Wisconsin.

Miner introduces me to several species of goldenrod, which look almost identical. Canadian goldenrod and elm-leaved goldenrod, with just a subtle difference in the leaves and a preference for

Emily Mills, The Nature Conservancy

Controlled burn in progress.

slightly different levels of soil moisture and sunlight, intermingle in the savanna’s mix of sun and shade. Elsewhere on the preserve, he says, you’ll find another five species: tall goldenrod, early goldenrod, gray goldenrod, showy goldenrod, and Ohio goldenrod (the latter a species of ‘special concern’ in Wisconsin, vulnerable in the face of climate change).

Aside from the goldenrods, the list of flowers that Miner pointed out that day includes whorled milkweed, vervain or verbena, flowering spurge, the invasive but lovely pink knapweed, wood betony, northern bedstraw, false Solomon’s seal (no longer in flower, but berries beginning to burgeon), pointed-leaf tick-trefoil, Illinois tick-trefoil, woodland sunflowers, rosinweed, round-headed bush clover, candle flower, native roses, spreading dog’s bane, Culver’s root, forked aster (a state-designated threatened plant), and the brilliant purple spikes of blazing star. A third to half of these are indicators of a remnant oak savanna.

At one point I am distracted from admiring the magenta flares of wood betony by the nearby coil of a gray coral fungus, with the white lace of northern bedstraw just inches away. “What’s interesting about a savanna is there’s a lot going on in really small areas,” Miner says.

We encounter berry-rich mammal scat, and he tells me bear have been seen here. And as we traverse the preserve we are delighted by the overhead antics of osprey and their spring chicks, who are

now flying juveniles. We hear the dinosaur-like rattles of the sandhill cranes we’ll later see strutting casually along the highway as we leave Lulu Lake

It’s not just the array of plant species with their wealth of pollen and nectar that makes a burned ecosystem better for bees. In a landscape with so many different kinds of habitat, the food is more abundant, and available over a longer period of time, even from a single species of flower. This is possible because dips and rises in the topography create small spaces of warmer or cooler air, higher moisture, or more or less direct sunlight. So depending upon their location, individual plants may bloom at different times from their kin, enabling their species to cover even more of the blooming season with their flowers.

“Seeing a high diversity of bees (including specialist pollinators) means you also have rare plants and healthy populations of them,” says Rericha-Anchor. And those benefits flow downstream in the ecosystem. It’s not just Lulu Lake, with its wild rice, that boasts beautiful water.

The Mukwonago River is one of the cleanest streams in this part of the state and has some of the highest diversity of fish and mussels, earning it the Department of Natural Resources’ designation as an exceptional water resource. These waters host species that are struggling elsewhere. The water passing into Lulu Lake and down the river, filtered through Lulu Lake’s wetlands, benefits everyone

U.S. Geological Survey

Andrena uvulariae, Female specimen.

downstream, from the Muckwonago River to the Fox, to the Mississippi itself. Lulu Lake and other kettle lakes tend to be points where the groundwater recharges, Miner says. So protecting the land around Lulu Lake benefits the spring-fed river system twice—as runoff enters the river from above, and when the water that soaks into the ground eventually reemerges via springs.

Climate

change is affecting Lulu Lake, like the rest of the state. The Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change has flagged rainfall, in particular, as a major concern for ecosystems. More intense but less frequent rainfall events will mean a greater whiplash between summer drought and flood. And the rain from one intense storm is more likely to run off into rivers and streams, as opposed to replenishing dry soil, than when the same amount of rain is spread across several milder storms.

The changing climate may affect the ability of land managers like Miner to burn during that ideal spring weather window, making it harder to target invasive species. And like the pollinators whose populations struggle against multiple stressors, ecosystems themselves are vulnerable to cumulative pressures. Oak trees, for instance, weakened by competition with invasive buckthorn, may find drought harder to weather and struggle to fight off their natural pests. This is why land managers need to use every tool they have to promote the health of the oak stands, including prescribed fire. “As the climate changes, the habitat will change,” Miner says. “I want to make sure the functionality is here and the diversity of habitat opportunities is here.”

The specific plants and animals at Lulu Lake may change as a result of temperature and water changes. Species that prefer the dry, warm southern slope of a prairie may drift towards the northern side to avoid extreme heat or disappear entirely. Chestnut oaks may drift in from the south and replace the white oaks. “We always have a diverse understory of wildflowers, but it might not be the same wildflowers over time,” Miner says. “And the more fire we put into (the ecosystem), the more it’s going to adapt to climate change.”

Fostering biodiversity with tools like controlled burns increases the odds that existing species will thrive and continue to perform the functions that keep their ecosystem vibrant and diverse–-good for the bees, but also for everything else, big and small, that depends on this lake, this prairie, and its precious acreage of oaks.

We All Depend on Nature

Christie Taylor is a Madison-born science writer and essayist, and former producer of the national radio show Science Friday. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and misses the prairie.

Nature is our life support system, providing clean air, clean water, and so much more. Together, we can protect nature so nature can continue to take care of us. nature.org/wisconsin

Pileated woodpecker © Liz Holmes/TNC Photo Contest 2021; pasque flowers © Steve S. Meyer; kids in nature © iStock/jacoblund

BOUND TO PLEASE: BOOK PUBLISHING IN WISCONSIN

BY KIM SUHR

You settle into the couch with a cup of hot tea. In a beam of light at just the right angle, you stroke the cover of your book club’s latest selection, crack the spine, take a long, deep inhale of new-book smell, and start to read. Of course, you know the book’s title, and the author, but—no peeking—who is the publisher? Odds are it’s one of the Big Five companies that dominate the book publishing world. However, there is a chance your book was published right here in Wisconsin, which has a long history of small- and mid-sized presses focusing on regional writers as well as new micro- and hybrid-presses.

Wendy Vardaman printing the letterpress cover she designed for Bent Paddle’s book Everything About Breathing by B.J. Best

Steve Tomasko

Since 1855, the Wisconsin Historical Society Press (WHSP) has been publishing books, magazines, and textbooks with the mission “to collect, preserve, and share stories about Wisconsin’s past.” Its current catalog, which boasts more than 400 titles, includes a rich variety ranging from children’s picture books to field guides to memoirs and histories of the various peoples who have called the state home. Many readers will recognize the names of two of the press’ best-known authors, Jerry Apps and John Gurda.

“We strive to share the stories of all Wisconsin people, many of them in their own voices,” says Press Director, Kate Thompson. “Since 2000, the press has published more than 135 books and magazine articles that share the stories and voices of African American, Native American, Hmong, Latino, and LGBTQ+ people, including more than a dozen biographies for elementary-age readers.”

The Wisconsin Act 31 Coalition, which develops resources for educators to provide instruction about the history, culture, and tribal sovereignty of the American Indian nations in the state, recommends many WHSP titles, including Native People of Wisconsin and Indian Nations of Wisconsin for young readers and adults respectively, along with Rebel Poet: More Stories from a 21st Century Indian by Louis V. Clark, III (Two Shoes). Other WHSP titles include Modern Jungles: A Hmong Refugee’s Childhood Story of Survival by Pao Lor; Self-Made Woman by transgender author, Denise Chanterelle DuBois, and Return to Wake Robin: One Cabin in the Heyday of Northwoods Resorts by Marnie O. Mamminga. All of these books feature the voices of people whose work might not be of interest for large publishers outside the Midwest.

During the pandemic shutdown, WHSP offered free access to its digital 4th-grade textbook for educators and parents, which was downloaded approximately 800 times. In response to the killing of George Floyd and the protests that followed, the press also provided free access to its Badger Biography e-book, Father Groppi: Marching for Civil Rights by Stuart Stotts.

TheUniversity of Wisconsin Press also boasts a long, respected history. Established in 1936, the press publishes 60-65 books in a typical year, with over 3,000 titles published and distributed since its inception and 1,500 titles currently in print. Its catalog includes books of general interest, scholarly books, and regional books about Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest. The press is not focused solely on Wisconsin, however. Its Fall 2022 catalog includes books on places and peoples from South Africa, Congo, Myanmar, and Thailand.

Though UW Press publishes the work of authors from across the country and, indeed, all over the world, it is especially friendly to writers with Wisconsin connections and works that reflect a Wisconsin sensibility. Authors who have worked with the press appreciate the individual attention and rigor that their books receive in the editing and production process.

As a university publisher, UW Press requires each manuscript to be peer reviewed by two readers before acceptance and publication. “I was surprised how rigorous and extensive the process was,” says Maggie Ginsberg, author of the novel Still True, noting that she welcomed this level of scrutiny.

Wisconsin has a long history of small- and mid-sized presses focusing on regional writers, as well as new micro- and hybrid-presses publishing books.

Ted Rulseh, author of Ripple Effects: How We’re Loving Our Lakes to Death , a book that examines existential threats to our Great Lakes, agrees. “The editorial process made me more confident that what I was putting out there was as unassailable factually as possible.” The peer review requirement is important for academics like Rebecca Webster, author of In Defense of Sovereignty: Protecting the Oneida Nation’s Inherent Right to Self-Determination. Webster’s book discusses lawsuits in which she participated as an attorney for her tribe in Hobart, Wisconsin. “This is a Wisconsin issue. I am a graduate of the University of Wisconsin. It made sense that this book would be published at UW Press.”

These authors noted the individual attention they received in the publishing process. Ginsberg says, “They all know who I am there… anything I asked for, they were really responsive. Plus, they put out beautiful books.” Jameka Williams, whose debut poetry collection, American Sex Tape, won the Brittingham Poetry Prize, also appreciates the editorial professionalism of the press and the closeness with which she was able to work with the editors. “There is so much space for writers to shape their books with regional, independent publishers,” she says. “UW Press has cultivated a beautiful literary community for writers.”

According to Publicity Manager Alison Shay, the press’s mission embodies the Wisconsin Idea, the principle that education should influence all people’s lives beyond the boundaries of the university and throughout the state.

TheWisconsin Idea is also alive and well at Cornerstone Press at UW–Stevens Point. Since its founding in 1984, the press has given undergraduate students real-world experience as editors, cover designers, publicity and marketing managers, and event planners. Students carry out nearly every task in the process of turning a manuscript into a book and marketing it. The model started simply: publish one book of prose during the fall semester and a poetry collection in the spring. Because the press was staffed by undergraduate students earning credit from the English Department for their work, labor costs were basically nonexistent, and financial resources could be funneled toward big launch events held on campus. At times, this included hosting a daylong conference for high school writers, travel and lodging expenses for authors, and a launch party that included dinner, a reading, and celebration of the students’ hard work.

All that changed with the pandemic. Cornerstone’s publisher, Ross Tangedal, recognized an opportunity in the upheaval. “When everything shut down, and we could no longer do in-person events, we needed to figure out how to be successful in a very different environment.”

By shifting to smaller first-print runs and downsizing in-person events, the press was able to expand the number of titles published to seven in the first year and 30 the next. Each semester, students get broad, deep experience with all facets of the publishing process for 12-15 books at a time. Expanding students’ work experience in book publishing is one of the most important outcomes of the press’s pivot. After graduation, they go on to use their management and editorial skills in many different fields, whether they go into the publishing industry or not.

When asked about her experience with Cornerstone, poet Margaret Rozga first mentions her work with the students. “It was wonderful to have extended conversations with those involved with the editing and production of the book. They raised good questions and explored various answers.” Though the students were initially a bit intimidated—they were working with the Wisconsin Poet Laureate after all—once they found she was open to their suggestions and insights, they became more comfortable and confident, and thoughtful. “I have never been read so thoroughly,” Rozga says. Instead of reading poems piecemeal as often happens in general literature classes, the editorial staff needed to consider what a “book of poetry does that is different from a single poem. You can’t get that type of poetry education just anywhere,” she says.

She was impressed with the professionalism of the students, noting that they came to editorial meetings well-prepared. She credits Tangedal’s leadership and trust in the students. “They are given responsibility they probably didn’t expect, and they live up to that trust.” As a professor of English at UW–Milwaukee’s Waukesha campus, Rozga has insight into what working in this capacity can mean to students. She believes young people want to reach beyond pleasing an instructor or doing “artificial” assignments. They want a real audience—in this case, the audience that comes with a published book. “This model raises so many possibilities for how we do education,” she says.

The editorial team also provided a new audience for Rozga’s book, Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems. Before working with the Cornerstone staff, she says, she hadn’t thought much about how her work was received by younger generations. Through the editing process, she came to have a better sense of what they are noticing and thinking about as they read poetry.

In addition to verse, Cornerstone publishes short story collections and memoirs. “Now we can accept many more titles,” says Tangedal, “and good stuff keeps coming in the door.” Currently, the press’ publishing calendar is filled until 2024.

Rescue Press, an independent publisher of poetry, prose, and hybrid texts, was founded in Milwaukee in 2009 by Danny Khalastchi and Caryl Pagel, when he was teaching at Marquette and she was at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) and Carthage College. According to Pagel, Rescue Press “remains untethered to a single aesthetic and is governed by a desire to remain flexible, collaborative, and curious. We believe in publishing as a generative process.” Though the editors now live in Iowa City and Cleveland respectively, they return to Wisconsin often for readings and events. “We’re a Midwestern press through and through,” Pagel says, and she credits Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee as a huge influence over the years.

New American Press in Grafton is another small literary publisher with roots in the state. It publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translated works, as well as an annual New from the Midwest anthology series that aims “to bring more visibility to the flourishing crop of Midwestern writers who consistently produce work that is innovative, engaging, finely crafted, and strong in voice.” Alternating between short fiction and poetry, the anthologies have featured work by well-known writers such as Rebecca Makkai,

Emmanuel Ikwuegbu

Ted Kooser, Joyce Carol Oates, Roxanne Gay, and Stuart Dybek. The press publishes three to five books a year and annually awards the New American Fiction Prize and the New American Poetry Prize in alternate years for full-length books.

Other

Wisconsin publishers, like Orange Hat/Ten16 in Waukesha and HenschelHAUS in Milwaukee, are hybrid presses, offering select writers a traditional publishing contract—in which the company takes on the financial responsibility of publication and pays the author royalties—while offering other writers a “hybrid contract”—in which the author pays for editing, book design, and production after which they keep 100% of book sale revenue.

It is easy to confuse hybrid publishing with self-publishing, but they aren’t the same. In self-publishing, there is no “bar” the work must clear, either for the quality of its writing and editing or for its aesthetic appeal. A writer can self-publish whatever they want. A hybrid press, however, reserves the right to decline manuscripts that aren’t up to its standards or which do not appeal to the press’s overall sensibility. Fortunately for writers, these companies often offer book coaching, editorial services, and other a la carte services to help bring manuscripts up to their requirements.

Many authors appreciate the fact that hybrid publishing gives them more input into decisions about their book than they might have with a traditional contract. The relationship between writer and publisher is more a creative partnership than the simple exchange of money for services in self-publishing.

Interest in hybrid publishing has expanded since the beginning of the pandemic, says Shannon Ishizaki of Orange Hat Publishing. “Authors realized how quickly life can turn upside down before having a chance to check off a major item on their bucket list: to write and publish a book.” Pre-pandemic, the press received between 2-4 submissions in a month. The number doubled during the pandemic and has since tripled. In response to growth in quality and quantity of submissions, the press added staff, created its second imprint, Ten16 Press, and found ways beyond the usual in-person book launch party to connect with readers.

Traditionally published books in the press’s catalog include picture books like Ari J.’s Kinky Curley Crown by Ain Heath Drew and The Binky Bandit by Milwaukee Brewers pitcher, Brent Suter, and award-winning novels like Truth and Other Lies by Maggie Smith and Behind the Lens and Double Exposure by Jeannée Sacken. Nonfiction titles include Tailspin, by John Armbruster, a personal narrative about WWII aviator Gene Moran, and Christy Wopat’s memoir about infant loss and grief, Almost a Mother.

Likewise, HenschelHAUS in Milwaukee publishes some books in the traditional model, recently releasing Nunzio’s Way by Madison-area author, Nick Chiarkas, whose award-winning debut novel, Weepers, came out with the press in 2015. And when she was looking for a publisher for her middle-grade books, The Stupendous Adventures of Mighty Marty Hayes and Aisha: Scientist, Spy, Superhero , author Lora Hyler connected with HenschelHAUS. Having a relationship with the publisher helped tremendously when the author subsequently decided to write a book for younger readers, Our Bodies Stay Home, Our Imaginations Run Free: A Corona -

Wisconsin Historical Society Press

WHS Press book Modern Jungles by Pao Lor featured by Wisconsin Center for the Book at the National Book Festival 2022.

Ross Tangedal, publisher at Cornerstone Press, with student editor.

virus Covid-19 Story for Children Because of the timeliness of the topic, it was vital that the manuscript not get tied up in a drawn-out publishing process. She began writing in mid-April and the book debuted in July 2020, an unlikely scenario with a larger press.

While hybrid presses have the capacity and resources to produce up to 15 traditionally published books a year, micro-presses focus on only a few titles, allowing them to concentrate on work that might be harder to place in the larger traditional publishing world. Bent Paddle Press in Middleton is one of these. Bent Paddle was founded as a traditional small poetry press in 2016 by Steve and Jeanie Tomasko, publishing full-length poetry collections (40-80 pages) and chapbooks (15-30 poems). The press emphasizes design, and its high standards have paid off. Says Steve Tomasko, “I’m proud to say that out of the first six books we published, two were chosen for first place and one for second place in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets annual poetry chapbook contest.” Though it is open to publishing authors from other places, Bent Paddle has, so far, published only Wisconsin poets.

Another micro-press with a Wisconsin focus is the Wisconsin Writers’ Association’s WWA Press, which is among the state’s oldest—and newest—presses. In 1948, the Wisconsin Rural Writers Association was founded with the mission of supporting and connecting writers across rural Wisconsin through a newsletter that informally published writers’ work. Eventually, the organization dropped “rural” from its name to expand its reach to all writers across Wisconsin, while continuing to offer programs and connections to support their writing. Over the years, the organization published anthologies in book form and prize-winning stories, poems, and essays in a literary journal, but the WWA Press was dormant for a number of years.

On the eve of the organization’s 75th anniversary, however, WWA revived its book-publishing specifically for its members’ submissions. “We publish books that have a strong Wisconsin theme and are set in Wisconsin,” says publisher Lisa Lickel. The first two offerings in the new incarnation nod to the rural roots of the organization: Gravedigger’s Daughter: Growing Up Rural by Debra Raye King and Red Road Redemption: Country Tales from the Heart of Wisconsin by Pamela Fullerton.

In 2021, the press published its first novel, Bone Broth by Lyndsey Ellis, which according to the website, “focuses on an African-American family navigating the Midwest’s convoluted history and social landscape.” The press’s latest offering is Bebikaan-ezhiwebiziwinan Nimkii: The Adventures of Nimkii by Stacie Sheldon. It is told in both English and Ojibwemowin, a language spoken by indigenous tribes in parts of Michigan, Ontario, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Alberta. Craig is an American sign language interpreter by day, so she does not rely on the press as her sole source of income, which allows Hidden Timber to take on passion projects that might not get attention at larger publishers. This openness to emerging authors and unique projects is a thread that runs throughout the publishing landscape in Wisconsin.

So next time it’s your turn to suggest a title for your book club, consider looking at books published right here in Wisconsin. The waiting list at the library will be shorter than for the latest bestseller. Or better yet, order them from your local independent bookstore or directly from the publisher. You will be supporting local voices, practicing good literary citizenship, keeping resources right here in Wisconsin, and introducing your friends to a new world of books and writing.

Kim Suhr is the author of Nothing to Lose (Cornerstone Press) and Maybe I’ll Learn: Snapshots of a Novice Mom . She holds an MFA in fiction and is Director of Red Oak Writing. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys reading, gardening, and time outdoors with her family.

Education

and “literary citizenship” are the cornerstones of another micro-press, Hidden Timber Books, run by Christi Craig in Wauwatosa. “As a publisher,” says Craig, “I focus on publishing your next great read but also on fostering authors to and through the publishing process. In this way, we strengthen our literary community all around.” With so many in-person author events and book festivals moving online during the pandemic, the press capitalized on its already successful online webinars and workshops and added an author series, featuring writers from other small- and micro-presses reading from their published work.

Hidden Timber Books was founded by Lisa Rivero, and its first publication was a picture book, The Adventures of a Sparrow Named Stanley, written and illustrated by two octogenarians, Betty Sydow and Carolou Lennon Nelson, who were in a writing class taught by Craig. An anthology, a short story collection, and a collection of poems followed before Rivero passed the torch to Craig, who had been working at the press as a contract editor since its inception.

#wibookfest

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SPONSOR Marvin J. Levy

Friends of Lorine Niedecker

Dedicated to preserving and expanding the legacy of poet Lorine Niedecker. We offer access to archives, educational materials and a semi-annual newsletter.

For news and events and to sign up for our newsletter go to lorineniedecker.org

LAKEFLY WRITERS CONFERENCE

A quality conference at an affordable price. Join our supportive community of writers at this two-day conference, May 5 and 6, at the Oshkosh Convention Center.

We offer over a dozen workshops on the craft and business of writing designed to inspire and guide your creative journey. Wisconsin author Beth Amos is the keynote; workshops include setting the scene, romance writing, and bone identification forensics. Extras include the Lakefly Marketplace, open mic night, door prizes and more!

For more information or to register, please visit lakeflywriters.org

PAIRED SOLO EXHIBITS ON VIEW

APRIL 28 TO JULY 23, 2023

ALISON GATES Points of Departure

COLIN MATTHES

The Days Go by Like Wildness

ARTISTS’ RECEPTION

April 28, 2023 – 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm

Artists’ talks begin at 7:00 pm

Free & open to the public. Light refreshments available.

Learn more at wisconsinacademy.org/watrous

Colin Matthes, Work from Home, (detail)

Dakota Mace, Helen Nez 003, lithograph, 11 x 15 inches.

A CONVERSATION WITH DAKOTA MACE

BY JODY CLOWES

Dakota Mace, as a Diné (Navajo) artist, focuses in her work on translating the language of Diné history and beliefs. She recently curated Reclaiming Identity, an exhibit of 25 Indigenous artists from across the U.S. and Mexico at the Trout Museum of Art in Appleton. In her own work, Mace draws from the history of her Diné heritage, exploring the themes of family lineage, community, and identity. Her work pushes the viewer’s understanding of Diné culture through the use of alternative photography techniques, weaving, beadwork, and papermaking. She talked recently about her creative process with Jody Clowes.

J: Tell me about the process of making this series. Helen Nez is actually a lithograph, right, as opposed to the chemigrams and cyanotypes you’ve been creating recently?

D: It’s kind of a combination of both. A lot of the photographic techniques that I use would be considered printmaking processes as well. Jumping back into printmaking has been a lot of fun. During my undergraduate work at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, I was focusing on printmaking and then slowly got into photography.

J: I didn’t realize that you started out as a printmaker. How do you decide what technique or material to work with for a particular piece?

D: So this work is part of a larger series, a larger body of work that I can’t talk about just yet. But the title of the series is Dahodiyinii, which translates to sacred places. The project is about retracing the stories and memories from my community and looking at the land and the way that it presents itself. So I used a combination of different mediums to look at the importance of land as a place of healing. Something that I wanted to come across with this project was the importance of the Diné story, and also how our close relationship to our home is an important aspect of who we are.

Something that comes up with this particular project is looking at how certain areas within our community have sacred significance, places of stories. We usually go to these places to connect to our ancestors and essentially just connect with the powers of the land. We never forget that we exist within a larger story, and are also part of a much larger living system that includes not only the water, but also the earth, the canyons, and the plants.

The entire project looks at the importance of natural materials, and at the Long Walk that my ancestors took in 1864. And this meant following the original route to Bosque Redondo, also known as Fort Sumner. I wanted to focus on certain elders and their stories. Telling the stories is an important part of this project, and also looking again at the relationship between land and community.

As a storyteller and also an image-maker, I wanted to use the printmaking process to activate the photographs and portraits of Helen herself, and to create textures that are similar to the landscape itself. Really emphasizing the power of nature, and also our ancestral memory, our indigenous knowledge.

So for Helen, this was important for me because not only is she Diné, but she is also related to me by my maternal clan, which is the Red House. Through our clan, we were able to connect and build this interesting connection with one another through my grandfather. And we were able to look at the Navajo Treaty of 1868, when my ancestors were released from Bosque Redondo, and find out what that treaty represented and how it created a significant shift in Diné history even today.

So the original title of the treaty is Naal Tsoos Saní , which translates to The Old Paper . And this is why I wanted to go back to printmaking and especially lithography, because of the process: the way that we’re able to create an image on top of the paper itself, but also layer it to signify the different moments in history.

It was at the signing of this treaty at Bosque Redondo that my ancestors essentially lost their freedom, their autonomy, and came under the rule of the U.S. government. So with each image, there is a series of five prints. And as you look at the prints, Helen slowly starts to fade away. And this is a reminder of how many of our elders’ stories disappear once they’re gone, especially the history that’s within their words.

For Helen, this treaty not only affected her past, but also the history of the land that she comes from. And for Helen, when she was a child, living close to the uranium mining companies, which used the Diné people to detect uranium deposits changed her perception of the U.S. government. She continues to persevere, even though she lost eight of her eleven children due to contamination from those mines.

J: That’s an overwhelming history.

D: But she still perseveres. She is a strong, powerful woman. And she is still one of the biggest activists against uranium mining.

J: Had you met Helen before this project? Is she someone who was in your life, or is she someone you have gotten to know through her advocacy?

D: She is someone that I met with. Like I said, this project involved building connections with my clan, my family particularly, and looking at our origins and our family story.

J: Not knowing that story before our conversation, and just looking at the work itself, I think you’ve communicated the feeling of land and disappearance effectively. I think I understand how you’re working with that idea through the lithographic process. Can you describe how these prints are made, the way that you begin with one image and remove elements of it bit by bit?

D: The process is done in an unconventional way. I love to play around with the processes and really experiment. I worked with Derek Hibbs, who is also a Madison artist, and we were able to figure out what we wanted to create on the image and then slowly take away portions of the metal printing plate itself. So that meant actually destroying the plate, with the intention of looking at how, again, much like Diné history, a lot of things are lost and change drastically in the process. Also on the plate is the first page of the Navajo Treaty of 1868.

J: I see that. It’s ironic that the treaty script is such a beautiful element of the image. Let’s talk about your relationship to photography. You often describe yourself as a photographer but, as you’ve said, most of your work doesn’t really look like photography. Did you start out working more traditionally, or did you move right into these alternative photographic processes from the beginning?

D: I have always been fascinated by photography. Something that inspired me was a particular room in my grandma’s home that showcased everyone’s photographs, some of which were printed on copy paper or didn’t have any frames. Something about that wall always stuck with me as a child, being able to look at how

we as a people preserve our visual history, our visual narratives within our homes.

So that was the initial point for me, looking at photography as a chance to change our narrative. At the Institute of American Indian Arts, I started with traditional black and white darkroom photography, but within my first year I started to learn different alternative processes. The reason behind that is that we went completely nontoxic at the Institute, and we had to get really creative with the way we created images.

So I started looking at these different processes, while taking printmaking courses at the same time and kind of combining both interests. And it was important for me to think about ‘what is a photograph,’ and what are the different ways to create one. But also, now that I’m working with textiles, a big part of my practice has become looking at ways that textiles and photography are similar in terms of the chemistry. There’s an opportunity to be creative and painterly in the way you interact with those materials.

J: I haven’t thought about textiles and photography being related in that way. You’ve often worked with weaving, beadwork, and other textile media, and you sometimes refer to textile media in your photography. In these most recent pieces, are they moving away from that connection, or is there still something there for you that feels connected to textile tradition?

D: Definitely. We haven’t included a lot of my textile pieces in this show (James Watrous Gallery exhibition, Fall 2022) because they’re out for other exhibitions, but there is still a big emphasis in textiles within my work, and especially with a recent series that’s titled Dahodiyinii. These are cyanotypes that are actually dyed with cochineal.

Combining the photographic process and textile dyes is important for me. Through the process of creating these cyanotypes, I’m looking at American history and the way that the U.S. Army expelled our people from our ancestral homeland as an act of ethnic cleansing that became the Long Walk. The number

of people who were lost during this walk was significant. It was 400 miles from Bosque Redondo, all the way back from their homes and everything, and the actual number of my ancestors that were lost was never recorded. So with these cyanotypes, the goal is to create a series of over 2000.

And each one has deep significance, because the cyanotype is a form of photography that doesn’t require a camera. I allow the paper and the print to interact with the environment. So placing it directly within the land at these different points of trajectory, following my ancestors’ path, the wind, the water, the sand, the plants, they all leave imprints. They leave traces in different ways on each of the prints.

Through this process, it’s important for me to be able to focus not only on the abstraction of these pieces, but also to honor each and every one of my ancestors who lost their lives during this forced migration. It is a special and important ceremony.

J: That’s beautiful. So by leaving this paper out in the landscape, you’re inviting these natural forces to interact with it. And your own hand is not involved in the image, you’re letting the land create it?

D: Yeah.

J: That’s amazing. So cochineal was a traditional dye for your people. Tell me about what that means to you and the significance of cochineal in particular.

D: As an artist, I have focused on spending at least four years with each of the colors that I work with. The colors are important in my work. So the last color that I did was indigo, really understanding the way the dye interacts with different types of materials, especially within a photograph, with textile pieces, with handmade paper. But with cochineal, it’s a completely different experience.

Looking at it from a historical perspective, the movement of cochineal pre-contact connected a lot of indigenous communities. I’ve been working with weavers based in Oaxaca to source the dye, seeing how their history is connected to cochineal and

Dakota Mace, Helen Nez series, lithographs.

HOW ARE DAKOTA MACE’S ŁICHÍÍ (RED) PRINTS MADE?

They begin as cyanotypes, which are contact prints made by exposing paper coated with UV-reactive chemicals to sunlight. With cyanotypes, you don’t use a camera to capture an image of something. Instead you use the thing itself, capturing the silhouette of the object by placing it on the coated paper and exposing it to sunlight. The resulting print is a deep blue, like a blueprint.

The Łichíí (Red) prints are created in several discrete steps. Mace begins by placing paper coated with UV-reactive chemicals in the landscape, leaving them long enough for the action of wind, water, and earth to create images on the surface. Back in her studio, she scans these cyanotype prints and then dyes the scans with red cochineal. As the resulting artworks are primarily red rather than the blue associated with cyanotypes, Mace describes them as “chemigrams,” a general term which encompasses several similar camera-free photo-processes.

WHAT IS COCHINEAL?

The cochineal, a tiny, cactus-dwelling insect that produces a vibrant red pigment, was harvested for thousands of years by Indigenous peoples in tropical and subtropical parts of the Americas to produce dye for their textiles.

Following the Spanish invasion of the Americas, cochineal ultimately became a globally traded commodity. In Europe, its red became the color of power, tinting the red coats of English soldiers and the Catholic clergy’s capes. Its commerce transformed the world of textiles, art, and trade, but at the expense of the Indigenous knowledge systems and labor that brought it to bear in the first place.

Dakota Mace, Łichíí landscape series, chemigrams, 6 x 9 inches.

building relationships with them to process the material itself. It still comes in the form of dried insects and then you break that down further.

J: It sounds like your training at the Institute was primarily in printmaking and photography. Did you learn to work with textile media in school as well, or did you start working with textiles when you were younger?

D: I grew up seeing textile weaving and dying being done in my family. But most of the artists within my family have been silversmiths. So that’s something that has been a big aspect of my work, looking at how silversmithing has been a big part of our identity, and also how those designs are translated from the land itself.

Through my research for a recent piece called Shared Histories, I came to understand that my third great-grandmother was a big part of the textile tradition within our family and to see where that tradition came from. But textiles came into my life later on. It was something that I picked up quickly. My mom and my grandma would tell me all the time, “it’s in your genetics that you were able to pick up weaving so quickly.” It’s important to me to be carrying on that tradition.

J: Diné tradition and Diné art have been a constant thread for you. Is there an element of your work that speaks directly to other Diné, that would only be apparent to someone who’s conversant with your tradition and your culture?

D: Definitely. There are a lot of aspects of my work that are, you know, just for the people. Especially the current work that I’m creating—it’s for my community and for my people. It’s a big part of our culture, that we are individuals, but we make up this bigger identity all together.

And that’s also why I work in multiples. Each print is unique. They’re always different. It’s like how designs are translated differently by different weavers. So we have similar stories, and in the designs we use, we’re all connected to one another. And all of our stories together are our larger identity and culture, much like the stars are part of the larger universe.

Often people will say my work isn’t something they’d traditionally associate with a Native or Indigenous artist. It challenges their perception of what it means to be Indigenous, and what it means to create art that’s related to your culture. It’s important to teach audiences that not all Native art has to look a particular way, or be held in a static visual presentation. It’s ever-evolving. Much like indigenous people, it’s always changing. We’re always adapting and adding to our materials and our processes and our understanding of our work.

J: What would you like visitors to take away from your exhibition?

D: An appreciation of the stories that each of these pieces represents. I selected three series that have been a big part of my progress as an artist, but there’s also the significance of why I selected these. They’re about our relationship to memory and land, the stories of our ancestors, and of missing and murdered Indigenous women today. These stories are important. They’re still affecting Indigenous people today, and are often not understood by people outside of our communities. We’re fighting to preserve our land and of course, to preserve our memory.

Dakota Mace (Diné) is an interdisciplinary artist who received MA and MFA degrees in Photography and Textile Design at UW–Madison and a BFA in Photography from the Institute of American Indian Arts. As a Diné (Navajo) artist, she draws on her heritage, exploring the themes of family lineage, community, and identity.

Jody Clowes is the director of the Wisconsin Academy’s James Watrous Gallery.

POINTS OF DEPARTURE

Alison Gates, Migratory Pattern, 2023, Paper (roadmap of the Continental US and land map of Canada interwoven) 13 x 18 inches.

ALISON GATES Green Bay

In my work, I ruminate quite a bit on the concept of change. The way words change, for instance, depending on context. The way land changes, depending on natural disasters, weather, and human impact. I’ve observed that the experience of a place or time can change, depending on how we perceive ourselves in that time, or at that place. Ten years ago, when I made the Global Warming bikinis, I could be glib about climate change and knit up some bikinis to predict what would happen to important Northern knitting traditions, once sweaters became obsolete. It was funny and the research was enjoyable. Knitting traditions informed each other; people moved around the globe and shared ideas. Ten years seems like a fairly short time when one considers the age of the earth and how long people have been weaving and knitting cloth and stitching things together to survive. However, so much can change in a short period of time. Now I’ve seen dozens of art exhibitions addressing climate change, and while my observations on knitting’s evolution are still valid, I don’t find things so humorous anymore.

Alison Gates, Global Warming/Material Culture, 2011-2023, knitted wool with cultural ephemera, installation size variable.

THE DAYS GO BY LIKE WILDNESS

Colin Matthes, Work from Home, 2020. Ink and watercolor on paper. 23.5 x 16.5 inches.

I draw with my kids, who are seven and five years old. Their freedom and joy while drawing is contagious. Once the kids are asleep, I unwind by drawing in my studio or on the couch while watching shows and having a few drinks with my wife. In the morning we start again. This daily drawing cycle produces cathartic, satisfying drawings of moments piling up. They combine imagination, influence from the kids, objects we live with, and narratives from books and shows. I have abandoned indecision and self-consciousness, making these drawings without an agenda. I simply draw because I draw. As my daughter says, the days go by like wildness. I am more free than ever.

Colin Matthes, The Days Go by Like Wildness, pencil on paper, 9 x 12 inches

MINING THE ARCHIVE: ARTISTS’ ACCORDION BOOKS

Ursa Anderson

This exhibition of artists’ accordion books reflects my personal and academic interest in the field of artists’ printed matter, especially artists’ periodicals. Fascinated by the accordion format, which occupies a place somewhere between the scroll, the book, and the print, I started a blog about these publications in 2010 in order to further explore this wonderful medium. This show presents a small selection of the fruits of my inquiry, with each work chosen to illustrate the many different ways in which artists have used the unique panoramic space of the accordion. Accordion books are wonderful hybrid works that exist in a space between different printed media, with their most pronounced characteristic being the folds that give them the ability to expand.

STEPHEN PERKINS

Madison

DOWN IN THE VALLEY

BY RICHIE ZABOROWSKE

Willie swung his hammer and missed, smacking his thumb. He mashed his lips together, trying not to swear. He considered the monastery on the hill, and the serenity of the valley where he knelt on top of a storage shed. Even the songs of the cardinals and chickadees, singing from the chokecherry, the oak, and the maple trees, echoed. Then he thought how sometimes the right cuss word at the right moment really does make you feel better, and he swore, a great gust of profanity that flew through the muggy heat of the valley and echoed over and over. He lowered his head, his thumb throbbing. He wondered if he had interrupted the nuns and their prayers or their sitting in silence, or whatever they did all day—he wasn’t sure. But he imagined them up there on the hill. Imagined that they were old and that their bones ached as they rose from their knees and hobbled through the rows of pews as they made their way to the monastery window, their dark liquid shapes pooling behind the stained-glass image of the Virgin Mary. He imagined the nuns slowly cranking open a window and peering out, casting their judgment upon him.

But when he gathered the courage to look, the monastery buildings were still, the windows all closed. It was brick on brick on pious brick and the Virgin Mary holding her hushed hillside vigil.

The pain in his thumb flared and he shook his hand. Sweat stung his eyes, and he pulled out the handkerchief from the back of his jeans pocket, wiped his face. He took another look around the valley, steadied himself, then grabbed another nail.

It was hard to concentrate. The cicada chorus had seemed louder and louder these last few days. It sounded to Willie as if the cicadas were screaming. He thought about his wife, Melinda. The baby hadn’t been due for another two months on that Friday evening when he had come home from work to find her bleeding. They had rushed to the hospital. He thought about how they had sat there waiting in that tiny room until the pediatrician, a man Willie had never liked, had walked in and told them the news. On the drive home, Melinda had been silent, leaning against the door, her face obscured by a lock of thick brown hair that had escaped her ponytail. He’d gripped the steering wheel tight, promising himself he’d remain optimistic, that he would be strong, a rock she could lean on. And when they got home, he told her over and over that it’d be all right.

Over the weekend, she’d spent most of her time in their bedroom, shades drawn, door locked. Willie would leave food and steaming mugs of her favorite tea at the door, and notes scrawled with a carpenter’s pencil. Then the evening before he left for the monastery job, to cheer her up, he knocked. But when she opened the door and he saw her blotchy face and the depth of her sorrow, he no longer felt strong. He felt unmoored.

Remembering to be strong, he cleared his throat, handed her a brochure, Every Child Needs a Home, that he had found serendipitously in the pages of ads in the Sunday paper. There was a golden-haired boy on the cover between two doting parents. We could always adopt, he told her.

“What,” she said, tears welling in her eyes, already stepping backward into the room, “is wrong with you?”

He didn’t know.

Jesus

H. Christ. You can’t be swearing up here. God himself must have heard that one.”

Dale’s head appeared at the top of the ladder as he reached the roof. Dale had been with the crew nearly ten years, twice as long as Willie. A big man with impending heart-attack energy, he always carried a soft pack of Camels in his shirt pocket. It looked like he was clutching his chest in pain whenever he reached for a smoke. He was a roofer through and through, nimble, almost graceful on a ladder. He could schlep shingles all day without complaint, didn’t mind tar fumes wafting off a hot roof.

“Can’t keep the sweat out of my eyes. I hit my thumb again,” Willie said, shaking his hand.

“That’s not a meat tenderizer, it’s a hammer. Try hitting the nails. And what did I say about swearing? These nuns aren’t messing around. You’re going to get us excoriated.”

“Excommunicated,” Willie said.

Dale lit a cigarette, cupped it in his hand, took a quick furtive drag, and dropped it to the roof. He mashed it out with his boot. “Exactly.”

Willie scratched his face, leaving a smudge of dirt and tar along his jawline. They hadn’t seen any nuns. Sure, they could hear their singing throughout the day, but they hadn’t talked to any yet. It was making them both anxious.

The heat didn’t help. Under the late August sun in Wisconsin, a roof can be twenty degrees hotter than the ground.

“I figure, what, two hours before the storm hits?” Dale said. The night before, a weatherman had predicted high-force winds, hail, and the possibility of tornadoes. A cold front was moving down from Canada and would collide with the heavy heat of the established low-pressure system.

“Just the storage shed left to finish. Then pack up the equipment. You’ll be back to Melinda before you know it.”

Melinda. What would he say? Willie dropped a shingle and feebly tried to pick it up. In his other hand, his hammer felt like a brick. What could he say to her? He still did not have the words, a solution that he could offer. He looked up, and the valley was spinning slightly, the

monastery buildings up on the hill stuttering left to right. His head was pounding. He swallowed against his rising nausea.

“I’m a bit woozy, Dale. I gotta rest for a second.”

“Christ, you look like a ghost. Go lie down in the shade and drink some damn water.”

When Willie reached the ground, he headed toward a bench at the foot of the hill. A copse of oak trees stood near the bench. With outstretched gnarled branches, they draped the bench in shade. Beside the bench, a gravel path led up the hill to the monastery. As Willie made his way to the bench, he noticed that the earth lay covered in thousands of acorns. In the dappled sunlight the mahogany nuts gleamed with a polished luster. Through his boots, he could feel them crumbling and scattering as he walked.

When Willie arrived at the bench, he sat. He spat on the ground and took a long pull from his thermos. The water was cool, like the shade. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. Again, he thought of Melinda. The baby. The words that would make everything all right. What were those words? he wondered. He closed his eyes.

Before heading out to the monastery, the boss had sat them down in his office. He’d told them to be on their best behavior while they replaced the monastery roofs. He explained that he could have sent a whole crew, had the job done in one day, but he didn’t want the guys horsing around and blasting their music. He wanted Dale and Willie to drive out there, quietly work their shift, and get off the property. Head back to the motel when they were done. When he told them they couldn’t smoke, Dale broke out in a coughing fit.

“What about on the roof?”

“No, Dale. Not on the roof, not on the ground. Don’t smoke on the property, period.”

“Sunflower seeds, Dale,” Willie said. “I heard sunflower seeds help.”

Even in the air-conditioned office, beads of sweat began forming on Dale’s forehead. The man loved to smoke.

“Or gum,” Willie said. “Can you chew gum and swing a hammer at the same time?”

“I don’t think the nuns would care. The roof, that high up—.”

“You want the out-of-town rate or not?”

Dale grinned. “Sure, boss.”

The men worked through the day, taking a break at noon when the church bell rang out twelve times, finding solace in the shade. The midday prayer wafted down to them in ghostlike fragments.

“Then act like you’re in a church when you get out there. These nuns aren’t messing around. They think they’re living in a garden or something. It’s like a sanctuary. You can’t be shouting and bothering them.”

They had done a few churches, and once replaced a tricky Dutch gabled roof, steep as hell, on Father Ron’s house in town here. But a monastery filled with nuns was a different story.

Later that day, Melinda had lost the baby. Then the broken-hearted weekend. Then early Monday morning the two men had piled into the sleeper semi-truck, the trailer behind them loaded with tools and pallets of shingles. After two hours of driving past corn fields and cows, the monastery was hard to miss. Even a mile out, Dale and Willie could see glimpses of the buildings through the trees as they followed a windy county road down into a valley. Following the directions the boss had written out, they turned onto a dirt road that cut through a thick pine forest. They emerged from the trees and the dirt road became a paved oval. Around the oval, stood several ancillary buildings: a garage, some storage units, and a lodge. These were the buildings the men would be working on.

On the eastern hill, brick buildings lay scattered as if they had tumbled from the peak and found purchase in the rocky forested slope. Amongst these, a tall narrow tower held a church bell lit with the first rays of the rising sun. Farther down, still in shadow, lay several domed buildings and an outdoor concrete amphitheater. From her position on the side of a castlelike building, the stained glass Virgin Mary stood overlooking a craggy precipice. These were the buildings of the monastery that housed the Discalced Carmelites of the Holy Name of Jesus. These were the buildings that their boss had forbidden them to go near.

Eachday they arrived at the jobsite before the sun rose. They laid out the equipment and prepped in near darkness. The rising sun lit upon the bell tower first. Soon after, the chanting of the nuns’ morning prayer drifted down the valley and shimmered through the morning fog. The men’s hammers rang out while the nuns sang their hymns. Swarms of mosquitoes came out to greet them, retreating when the sun had burned off the fog. The men worked through the day, taking a break at noon when the church bell rang out twelve times. They found solace in the shade as the midday prayer wafted down to them in ghost-like fragments. After the break, they began working again and continued until sunset. They finished as the first fireflies appeared in the valley.

Exhausted, the men would head back to the Surf Wood Motel, a dusty dive plopped between two cornfields. In the front office, a stuffed swordfish hung in the middle of a powder blue wall. A large counter wrapped around to a bar in the back. The owner, a small taciturn man, would work the front office counter and serve drinks in the back at the same time. The nautical theme extended to the bar; mismatched Tiki decorations were strewn about the fake wood-paneled wall and a fisherman’s net hung from the ceiling; a pool table sat hulking in the middle of the room.

Too tired to play pool, the men sat at the bar and drank longneck Old Styles while eating their gas station dinners. Dale finished his club sandwich, crumpled the wrapper. He lit a cigarette, took a drag, and parked it in the ashtray on the bar. “One thing’s for certain, you’ll always be allowed to smoke in bars.” He laughed.

Willie looked at his half-eaten egg salad sandwich and pushed it aside. Night Court , playing on a small television at the end of the bar, was interrupted by a weather update.

“We gotta finish before the storm,” Dale said. “Otherwise, we’re going to end up back here Monday.”

Willie took a long pull from his bottle of beer. In the corner, the owner scratched in an answer to his crossword puzzle.

“What’s Melinda going to say if we have to come back on Monday?”

“I’m not sure she’s going to care one way or another,” Willie said, peeling a strip of the label off his bottle. He was rolling the strips in his hand then placing them in a pile.

“What’s up with you?”

Willie took a sip of beer. On the television, there was a map of the county with lightning bolts, bands of clouds with arrows predicting their direction. A neon Schlitz sign buzzed in the corner. The arm of the jukebox lifted a 45. The needle fell on To Ramona and Bob Dylan’s keening, golden lamentations emanated from the speaker.

Dale pounded the bar with his fist. “Come, on. It’s our last night.” The owner looked up from his newspaper. Dale waved him over. “Let’s get Papa Bear here a shot,” he said nodding to Willie.

The owner placed his eyeglasses on the bar and plodded over to the men.

“Pretty soon Willie will be up to here,” Dale said to the owner, his hand at his chest, “in diapers.”

“Congratulations,” the owner said without emotion.

Dale rubbed his hands together. “You got any vermox?”

“What’s that?” the owner asked.

Dale scanned the bottles in front of the bar mirror. “It’s homemade. All the bars around here have it. There,” he said, pointing to the bottom shelf.

The bartender placed a whiskey bottle with no label on the counter. The liquid inside, half whiskey, half vermouth, was dark brown. A sprig of wormwood weed sat steeping in the middle.

“Really?” Willie asked. He could already taste the bitter, pungent flavor.

“Don’t get soft on me now,” Dale said as the bartender poured two shots. Bits of the weed floated atop the whiskey.

“Smells awful,” the owner said.

“Tastes awful. You want one?” Dale asked.

“Oh,” he said, his hands outstretched. “I don’t drink.”

“What do you mean?” Dale looked confused. “You own a bar.”

The man looked around the place and shrugged. “My grandfather owned a lot of properties. When he passed, he left me this place.”

“Aren’t you lucky,” Willie said.

“Yes, and no. My sister inherited a laundromat. Makes decent money. Hardly has to lift a finger.”

Dale elbowed Willie in the side. “We’re in the wrong business. Get yourself a laundromat, then you can stay home with Melinda and the little guy.”

Willie reached for his shot and drank it down. The vermox was violently bitter. Like ground aspirin, or the milk from a dandelion stem, with a hint of bug repellent. But as it hit his half-empty stomach, he felt that familiar glow, the temporary relief that only whiskey seems to bring.

“Another,” he said, pointing at the empty shot glass.

“Well, prost to you too,” Dale said, lifting up his shot and drinking it down.

The bartender poured two more, and Willie reached out for his glass.

“Easy there, Papa,” Dale said, pulling a twig of wormwood from his teeth. “Got a long day tomorrow.”

Willie drank his shot, shuddered, then placed the glass on the bar. He pointed again. The owner poured another and Willie drank it down.

“We lost the baby,” Willie said, staring into the empty glass.

Dale’s face contorted, and Willie felt a wave of guilt. He knew Dale was a good guy. A damn good guy. He should have told him sooner.

“Sorry, should have told you. Melinda’s so upset and everything. It’s a mess.”

Dale looked up and away, and bit his cheek. “You try talking to her?”

“Of course I tried.”

“What did she say?” the bartender asked. Willie thought back. What had Melinda said? He couldn’t remember.

Thenext morning, the men headed out to the monastery earlier than usual. They scrambled to finish before the heat and the storm. Willie worked on the last roof, thinking of Melinda and what he might say to her. Then he hit his thumb, and the heat became unbearable. He found solace in the shade, and lay down on the bench.

Willie drifted in and out of sleep, in and out of dreams and thoughts of Melinda, of the baby, of what he should say when he returned home that evening. He stirred and opened his eyes. There was a woman standing in front of him. The sun was behind her and her features were lost in the radiance. He could just make out her plain white tunic and a black coif that covered her hair and fell down her back. He felt rude not standing up, but he was afraid that if he moved, she would disappear.

“It must be a mast year,” she said, looking around at the oak trees. “Did you know trees can talk to each other?” She sounded younger than Willie expected. Her words were like a burbling spring feeding into a stream that never changed and flowed on and on forever. “They communicate. They plan for their survival. And every few years they dump so many acorns that there are far too many for the squirrels to eat or to hide. And so,” she said, raising her hands, palms up, skyward, “some of the acorns have a chance to grow. “

JUDGE’S NOTES

AMY QUAN BARRY

Willie and his partner are hired to roof a local monastery where the resident nuns have taken vows of silence. A chance encounter emboldens Willie to have a difficult conversation with his wife. A lovely investigation into the impact of holding space for others, and how in healing ourselves, we also heal those around us.

Willie turned on the bench. The squirrels were madly darting amongst the trees, their tails twitching, greedily turning acorns in their paws. “Looks like they have their work cut out for them, that’s for sure.” His voice was raw. He took a drink from his thermos. The water, from the Surf Wood Motel tap, was crisp and delicious. “A mast year. I never heard of that before. Dale would get a kick out of that.”

“Your coworker? You should put him at ease, tell him that the cigarette smoke doesn’t bother us. We could smoke. If we wanted to, that is.” She covered her eyes and looked back over the valley. They could hear Dale’s hammer thwacking away. “It wouldn’t be a rule violation or anything like that. We don’t smoke because we take a vow of poverty. If one sister had cigarettes, I suppose we would all be jealous or something.”

Willie laughed, turned on his back, and closed his eyes again. “Yeah, I could see that.”

The nun reached down and plucked an acorn from the ground. She regarded it for a moment before letting it fall from her hand. “We all smoked together once, after Gwen’s

mother died. Gwen was young, and she had just joined our cloister. She knew when she joined us that her mother was sick. So it wasn’t a surprise. But all the same. It’s hard. And then Gwen left to help her family. We had the sense that she wasn’t coming back. And she never did. That night a group of us went for a walk. Gwen told stories about her mother. They were kind stories, and funny too. Gwen was a real firecracker, and so was her mother. Someone brought out a pack of cigarettes and we passed them around and we all smoked. And we walked and Gwen talked and we just listened.”

When Willie opened his eyes again, Dale was standing before him. “Mother Nature’s going to let loose on us soon. Ready to get out of here?”

A cool breeze was coming down from the hills. It was stifling hot one moment, cold the next. The air was charged, the birds and cicadas now silent. A shelf cloud was cresting the hill, a dark rolling line with bright milky lobes on the bottom that hung down like fingers. Beyond the clouds was only darkness, lit up sporadically by bolts of lightning.

Dale had finished. The roofs were complete, the equipment loaded. The men made their way to the rig.

“We did it,” Dale said, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. “Four roofs finished.”

Willie grabbed his lunchbox and toolbelt from the grass. “And no nuns harmed in the process.”

Dale took a long drag from his cigarette and looked up to the monastery on the hill. “The boss will be proud we didn’t get executed.”

“Excommunicated,” Willie said, opening the door of the cab and tossing his toolbelt in.

“That too,” Dale said, tossing his butt on the grass and grinding it out.

There was a crack of lightning followed by thunder. The men jumped into the truck. Dale pushed the pedal down, and shifted. They climbed up out of the valley, then turned toward the motel, just ahead of the storm.

Back at the motel, Dale parked the rig. The men made their way across the parking lot. The wind was picking up and above they could see the clouds churning in dark swirls. Dale stopped midway to the motel and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a fistful of quarters.

“Why don’t you give Melinda a call? We should wait this out anyway.”

Willie reached out and Dale dumped the quarters into his cupped hand.

Dale nodded toward the motel. “I’m going to have a vermox for the road.”

Willie reached the phone booth and closed the door behind him. He could hear the rumble of the approaching storm and the first few raindrops like pebbles tossed against the glass. He fed the quarters into the coin slot and heard their jangled hollow crash. As he pressed the square metal buttons, he heard the muted melody of his phone number, the harsh mechanical beep of each and every number. Melinda answered. The wind outside the booth rose, howling like a runaway train, and the rain came pouring down and her words came pouring out. Willie had to mash the plastic receiver against his ear to hear her. He could not shout over the wind, rain, and thunder, so he was silent.

And he listened.

Richie Zaborowske is a father, author, and a public librarian in the Fox Cities. He puts a contemporary twist on traditional library offerings; his monthly Short Story Night packs the local brewery and features trivia, comedy, and author interviews. His writing has appeared in Barstow and Grand, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Los Angeles Review, and others.

Supporting poets in Wisconsin for almost 75 years

Spring Conference

April 28 & 29 • Oshkosh with Amorak Huey and Wisconsin Poet Laureate

Nick Gulig

www.wfop.org

WFOP is a proud member of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission

Poetry

from our 2022 Poetry Contest

Home in the Borderland

The border is never real. Imagined, invented, imposed, hardening space at the current confluence of cultures, away from the poles and centers, hinterlands holding their own, identities carved out of contrast, distinct from the distant metropoles of power where fears rule. Bearing devastations, history’s tensions at play in pogroms and Holodomor, in massacres at Mykolaiv and Babyn Yar and Odessa, in clashes and capitulations. In borderlands some abide the strains and pulls, the soil itself holds the blood of loyalty and kin, births grains and grasses, songbirds and children, while for others the earth is only fit for planting flags to flutter in the wind, demarcating lines of suffering.

Curt Meine is a conservation biologist, environmental historian, and writer based in Sauk County. He is a Senior Fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation and the Center for Humans and Nature, and a Research Associate with the International Crane Foundation. He has authored and edited several books, including Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work and The Driftless Reader.

Curt Meine

for Peter Ostroushko (1953-2021)

It Is, It’s Not

It’s still a ways away. It’s going to go away, you know. It’s still there. It is, or it isn’t. It’s in the mail. It’s in the console. It’s the perfect fit. It’s me versus you. It’s something we can all look back to. It’s forward looking. It’s around here somewhere. It’s the American Dream. It’s far from my reach. It’s only six weeks until raise time. It’s not guaranteed. It’s destined for nowhere. It’s written in Sanskrit. It’s translated to mean something unknown. It’s in the works. It’s not in the cards. It’s on my dresser. It’s not that. It’s not the way that goes. It’s not their best work. It’s not that funny, is it? It’s not Fleetwood Mac. It’s not nice to be right all the time. It’s not nice to boast. It’s not a miracle to me. It’s not pure. It’s not the worst thing that could happen. It’s not who you think it is. It’s not over there, I said. It’s not impossible to go back to school at your age. It’s not that far on the map. It’s not something you could actually get a job doing. It’s none of your business. It’s not my first rodeo. It’s not too bad going down. It’s third and long at the Rams’ 38-yard line. It’s all a big money thing. It’s guaranteed 2-day delivery. It’s neither of yours now, goddammit! It is to be read along with my will. It’s such a waste of time. It’s at least something. It’s over there, I said! It’s neither the best, nor the worst. It’s nothing compared to yours. It’s snowing! It’s time to go potty, Dog Dog. It’s hell getting old. It’s cold in here. It’s not cold in here! It’s not on this map anywhere. It’s not yours. It’s impossible to hear in this room. It’s winding down. It’s incomprehensible to me. It’s poetry wearing winter camouflage. It’s getting late. It’s not like this could go on forever, could it?

Jim Landwehr

Jim Landwehr has four published memoirs (At the Lake, Cretin Boy, Dirty Shirt, The Portland House) and five poetry collections (Thoughts from a Line at the DMV, Genetically Speaking, Reciting from Memory, Written Life, On a Road). He lives in Waukesha and was the 2018-2019 poet laureate for the Village of Wales.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Memorial Days

This isn’t a protest, you understand. Bonfire in May with wood that’s gone dry, we’re burning the things that cannot withstand.

My brother and grandma both see to this land as soldier turned farmer and farmer gone by. This isn’t a protest, you understand.

Grandma is gleeful. In her outstretched hand an old pair of blue jeans, ripped to the thigh. We’re burning the things that cannot withstand.

The jeans sigh out smoke as the fabric expands. My brother’s unfazed. He’s seen larger things die. This isn’t a protest, you understand.

It’s just spring cleaning. As burning is planned on prairies and places grown up too high, it’s burning the things that cannot withstand.

Grandma’s not done. A flag hanging in strands burns red and blue as she catches my eye. This isn’t a protest, you understand. I’m burning the things that cannot withstand.

Claire Lewandowski is an educator, organizer, and Catholic Worker currently living in Iowa City, Iowa. She holds a BA from Middlebury College and an MS from UW–Madison. Her writing explores themes of faith, community, queerness, and labor.

Claire Lewandowski

EDITOR’S CHOICE

In this story, is a person on a bus or in a bus?

Winter mornings I walk outside before the world starts up again. An occasional car, the early bus with one person on it. Sometimes the wind hasn’t even started and the heat from the chimneys of all the sleepers rises up above the houses. Snow and ice crack under my boots. My lungs fill with the cold air of stars. Sometimes there’s an owl. In today’s story, there’s a moon and also a lot wrong with the world, but here before the news, you can’t tell. Nothing I can do about the steadfast sun, right on schedule. But I get a feeling I can still borrow that predictable plot some time.

Jeanie Tomasko is the author of a few books of poetry and creator of The Blue Dog Blog, a painting and adventure series at jeanietomasko. com. She is a retired RN, and she and her husband share a home with two overstuffed cats and one wonderful cattle dog.

Jeanie Tomasko

Ink

by Angela Woodward

University Press of Kentucky, 141 pages, $21.95

Reviewed by Dwight Allen

There can’t be many novels with titles shorter than the one that adorns Ink , Madison writer Angela Woodward’s third book of fiction; nor are there likely to be many novels in which short essays about the chemistry of ink (and the nature of other monosyllabic substances: ice, soap, blood) are interspersed in a story about two women transcribing accounts of Iraqi men and women tortured by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison in 2003. Ink is a novel determined to be different, like a piece of free-form jazz in which a talented musician/composer plays solos that sometimes point to common themes, sometimes seem like random if engrossing flourishes, and sometimes find a more conventional groove (such as those two women typists and their domestic lives).

We see the author herself in her house on the shore of Lake Monona, walking on the frozen lake, and in a waiting room editing a version of the book we are reading. Sometimes she chimes in with a self-critical note. “Needs connection,” she writes near the end of a riff about soap by the twentieth-century French poet Francis Ponge. A reader may hear in this memo-to-self an echo of advice found in E.M. Forster’s Howards End : “Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.”

But Ink, like many texts of the last hundred years (see Finnegans Wake and the stories of Donald Barthelme and Lydia Davis), lives in fragments. The discrete (and fact-laden) pieces about ink and blood and soap and water flow (as James Joyce put it) via a “commodious vicus of recirculation,” into the offices of the Titan Corporation, where the two women, Sylvia and Marina, type the testimony of Abu Ghraib victims on ancient IBM Selectrics. The typists take little obvious interest in the subject matter of their work. The testimony functions as a refrain, thunder that shocks at first and then dulls with repetition. What mostly occupies Sylvia and Marina, who have between them three children and “zero husbands,” are, in addition to minor office issues involving soap and blood and ink, their lives outside the office.

It is in these domestic scenes, and especially in the moments between Sylvia and her teenaged son, Jordan, that Ink finds its fullest expression. Woodward writes about parent-child relationships with wit and tenderness. There is a fine scene in a formal wear rental store in a strip mall where the mother has taken her sullen son to get a suit for a choir concert. It is in this shop, as the son tries out a dance step in his rented jacket and Sylvia hides her tears, and at the concert itself, that “human love” is seen. Early in the novel, the author notes “how inevitable our failure [is] when we try to say what a thing [ink, soap, blood] is.” This slim book does not fail to show that soap is slippery and “ink obscures its nature,” and it succeeds as well in connecting the prose and the passion, exalting both.

Dwight Allen is a graduate of Lawrence University and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He was on the staff of The New Yorker during the 1980s, and has written for that magazine and others. He is the author of three books of fiction: The Green Suit, Judge, and The Typewriter Satyr. He lives in Madison.

It Takes a Worried Woman by Debra Monroe

University of Georgia Press, 192 pages, $19.95

Reviewed by Michelle Wildgen

Debra Monroe’s writing is sneaky, and I mean that in a good way. In her new book of essays, the Flannery O’Connor award winner and author of six other books of fiction and nonfiction considers roughly 40 years of her life, offering such measured observation and calm recitation of events that the effect on the reader can happen on a time delay. Immersed in the early essays on the life of a single parent, it took me a beat to grasp just how tense I had become; a witty side-swipe— “As long as my boyfriend didn’t talk,” she notes dryly at one point, “he was a void into which I poured thoughts so profound he apparently found them inexpressible”—is all the more satisfying thanks to her reserved tone.

Monroe covers a lot of ground in these essays: early bad marriages (and later, a happy one), schooling, work, the crush of early parenthood, the terror of raising a Black daughter in a country whose overt demonstrations of racism have been newly invigorated, and downsizing once the kids are gone. She handles every beat with a searching intellectual curiosity. For all the tension animating these essays, there is humor and beauty too. After that description of single parenting that had me hunched in a ball, she pauses to say that none of this is what her child remembers: she remembers following the big vacuum with her toy vacuum, carrots from the garden, the tree house.

The book is compact and dense, occasionally weighed down by passages of repetition, but far more often sharpened by Monroe’s gift for finding the most compelling angles of common life events. When she writes about young adulthood, for example, she delves into her quest for mother figures and into the misogyny echoing through both her restaurant work and her marriage at the time. She is wonderfully matter-of-fact about strategizing to balance single parenthood with sexual agency, and agonizingly so about an early spring day on which she felt “a happy surge of reinvention,” not knowing that her day would end with a brutal assault by an acquaintance. “My sense of safety wasn’t compromised that night,” she writes in a slice so clean it sinks all the way in, “but reconfigured

to match reality.” It all adds up to a portrait of a life that could feel familiar in its topics of marriage, children, work, but never does. Instead, Monroe reveals the riptides that have always lurked in quotidian places. These pages may be rife with people refusing to see what they don’t want to know, but the author is not one of them.

Michelle Wildgen ’s fourth novel, Wine People , will be published in August 2023. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review and Modern Love column, Oprah Magazine, Best Food Writing , and elsewhere. In 2013, she cofounded the Madison Writers’ Studio with novelist Susanna Daniel.

Still True

by Maggie Ginsberg

University of Wisconsin Press, 280 pages, $17.95

Reviewed by Susanna Daniel

You don’t need to know anything about Maggie Ginsberg to adore her first novel. You don’t need to know that she’s a truly lovely person, warm and generous of spirit. The kind of person who offers her secrets to help you heal your own.

All of this is irrelevant because this is a book review, not an author review.

Except that Still True is a first novel, and like most first novels, it’s clear that Ginsberg has imbued it with everything life has handed her up to now. She gives us Lib and Jack, married three decades without living together. She gives us Claire and Charlie, mother and son trapped in an unhappy home. She gives us the fictional town of Anthem, Wisconsin, not a quaint and reductive portrait of it but rather a convincing place inhabited by a hash of likeable misfits. She gives us Lib’s hard-fought independence, Claire’s desperate self-destruction, Charlie’s lonely bids for escape, Jack’s stubborn fear of change.

You don’t need to know the author personally to feel the earned wisdom in the interior lives of her characters. Take Lib, for instance: “Overhead, a trio of vultures churned the late afternoon sky. She watched them circle, thinking, not for the first time, that self-preservation took a special kind of patience.” With every scene or glimpse inside a character’s heart and mind, Ginsberg reminds the reader: Make connections. Hold fast to them. And know when to let go.

Holding fast is the beating heart at Still True’s center. It’s a tenacious and fearless book even in its prose. It dives so unflinchingly into each scene that we feel as if we’re wearing the character’s skin. The book (like the author) is lush and vigorous and generous, ardent in its examination of each meaningful moment. You’re never left guessing at a character’s experience, just as you never leave a conversation with the author herself feeling unsatisfied or unheard. Even a marriage of three decades receives Ginsberg’s luxuriant focus.

“He never knew what she’d bring him—an idea, a token, a story. Onions plucked from her garden, dirt still clinging to their roots. Sometimes nothing at all, not a word, for days. He didn’t care. He knew how lucky he was. Coming together with Lib hadn’t felt like compromising or sacrificing, more like doubling himself in size. Expanding as though he’d swallowed some magic tonic.”

In the hands of a lesser writer, Lib and Jack’s unconventional marriage might have elbowed its way into the book’s forefront, but Ginsberg’s story is about living authentically, and the marriage is tested not by distance but by secrets.

This is not an author review, no. But it’s compelling, isn’t it, to know that the way an author moves in the world is reflected in her storytelling? That without Ginsberg’s boundless spirit, her novel might be something less than the fully humane novel that it is, and it might not brim as it does with decency and truth? I think so.

Susanna Daniel is the author of 3.5 novels, including Stiltsville and Sea Creatures , and the forthcoming Battersea Road. She co-founded the Madison Writers’ Studio and worked with Maggie Ginsberg in that capacity for more than a year.

Mby Dale M. Kushner

3: A Taos Press, 99 pages, $25

Reviewed by Jean Feraca

The cover of this astonishing poetry collection features a woman rising out of a primordial gloom, her arms clawing the cracked walls of an ancient mikvah, the Jewish symbol of purification. Hanging in the Doge’s palace in Venice is another image that could well have served on this cover: a magnificent 17th century painting by Artemisia Gentileschi of Mary Magdalene in the throes of an ecstatic vision, head thrown back, red hair streaming.

M is a gorgeous book in every particular: the quality of the paper, the size of the page, the delicacy of the fonts, the elegance of the logo, an “M” that births a fleur-de-lis. This book will not fit neatly on your shelf of women poets, and it shouldn’t. The design team that brought the manuscript to fruition, clearly understood its worth.

Kushner divides her book into three sections: the Via Desiderio explores eros in the stories of Eve, the Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalene; the Via Dolorosa compiles a compendium of women, all with names beginning with “M,” who suffer every imaginable atrocity of the modern world: wars, rape, kidnapping, including the horrendous abduction of 276 Nigerian girls by Boko Haram terrorists. In giving these women a voice to express their collective “bereavement, rage and resilience,” Kushner reveals her own courage, empathy, and depth. Only in the Via Transformativa, the final section, do we hear her speak out of personal pain and loss in poems that search for her father and track the theme of intergenerational trauma in her family.

It is hard to believe this is a first collection. The church fathers needed a Mary who was a virgin and a Magdalene who was a whore, but Kushner abides by no such constraints. She gives us red-blooded women we can identify with: an Eve who can’t get enough of Adam; a Mary who recoils from the angel and longs to escape her destiny; a Magdalene who rebels and dares to defy the Pharisees:

Let them call me harlot!

And if they dare fling stones in my face,

I shall sing out the true nature of pollution:

Not this silken dove

Tucked between my legs.

Not this tiger-heart, Pacing in its ring of fire.

Not even Jesus could resist such a passionate woman. In daring to reimagine this sacred story of stories, Kushner manages to restore to women what two thousand plus years of church history have systematically denied them. In bringing sexuality and spirituality together in a sacred marriage, Kushner stands on the authority of cutting-edge feminist theology, an impressive bibliography, and a church that finally acknowledges the Magdalene as “the Apostle to the Apostles.” Women will rejoice, discovering in these poems the sacredness of their own bodies and of the earth itself, for “Earth here is as opulent as their heaven.” What a gift. These are more than poems; they are prayers suitable for contemplation—intuitive, revelatory, and prophetic.

Jean Feraca is the author of the award-winning memoir I Hear Voices: A Memoir of Love, Death, and the Radio and three books of poetry, and she has begun a new memoir tentatively titled, In the Beginning. She retired in 2012 from her distinguished career as a broadcaster with Wisconsin Public Radio.

Into the Good World Again by

Max Garland

Holy Cow! Press, 86 pages, $16.95

Reviewed by Katrin Talbot

Recently, The New York Times published an opinion piece with the slightly misleading title “Poetry Died 100 Years Ago This Month,” ruffling the feathers of many poets and their readers. As if in reply, Max Garland, a former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin, has produced a new poetry collection that presents final arguments against the piece’s premise, that we stopped writing good poetry because we are now incapable of doing so. The good poems in Into the Good World Again are not just about emerging from a global pandemic; they infuse us with hope and joy after the darkness of our shared global experience and remind us of the strengths we needed to unearth. We recognize the song, but Garland’s new lyrics bring comfort and wisdom. In the opening poem, “Intensive Care,” for instance:

And if there’s a bright surge in her face, a comeback of breath now and then, the whole world is reminded how brief and timely a spark it takes How little kindling the mortal fire is still willing to work with

The poet continues to warm his hands over mortality in many of the poems and clearly delineates what is important in this life that has been so challenged and challenging in the last few years–repopulate the dark with your fledgling human light Garland’s poetry offers us a passport for getting back. It helps that there is so much light in these poems, so much music and, more often than not, a connection to the water he lives by and walks along—I’ve walked to shed the gossip of self, that unsustainable racket—and watches.

It’s the sun-spill and spell-binding that holds me here (…) then colors with no names, and shapes like something alive wants watching and water is the only way to ask

His poetic lenses bring a clarified view of living on this planet with its traveled light, its hibernating worms, its dubious stars: The deeper the listening, / the richer the world.

Such words Thoreau might have uttered; Garland wrote them from his own deep connection to the worlds around him, natural and otherwise. In another world, Garland and Thoreau would be fine companions, observing minor blessings together. His informed framing of all things science in his poetry suggests Garland has a secret Honorary Doctorate in Appreciative Sciences: from the carbon atoms—tiny exiled gods in their sparse garments of motion to invasive species, the sweetness of photosynthesis— leaves… as lush as they’ll get / full-blown, sugar high / mining the air and astronomical observations that slide into love poems.

Garland’s bio includes an early job as rural Kentucky mail carrier along the route where he was born. Now, thankfully, he continues to deliver profound grace and hope to a thirsty world through poetry that is exquisitely and astonishingly alive.

Katrin Talbot was born in Australia. Her poetry collection, The Waiting Room for the Imperfect Alibis, is out from Kelsay Books and she has two more full-length books forthcoming. Also a violist and photographer, she has seven chapbooks, two Pushcart Prize nominations, an M.S. in Molecular Biology from UW–Madison, and quite a few chickens.

DIVERSE GROUP GOES TO WORK AT CLIMATE FAST FORWARD CONFERENCE

JESSICA JAMES

Nearly 400 Wisconsin residents gathered last October at the Monona Terrace Convention Center in Madison for Climate Fast Forward, a participatory conference hosted by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters. The conference was an opportunity for change-makers across the state to convene and identify climate actions that are transformational, centered on equity and justice, and achievable for Wisconsin. Business leaders, Tribal Nations staff and members, nonprofit leaders, local government leaders, and young professionals helped shape the conference and outreach strategy. This approach ensured that the conference included voices from diverse groups throughout the state.

Attendees heard from indigenous leaders, a panel of stakeholders on federal funding opportunities, and poet-in-residence Alexandria Delcourt in the opening plenary session. They also participated in self-selected working groups in one of five tracks: Green Jobs & the New Economy, Traditional Perspectives on the Environment, Natural & Working Landscapes, Built Environment, or Climate Justice & Community Resilience. Led by experts in these fields and guided by professional facilitators, the participants quickly got to work to identify climate actions for Wisconsin.

One theme that emerged from all working groups was the desire to create more forums for collaboration to continue the work begun at the conference. Some outcomes of the conference include the creation of a climate justice coalition, a natural climate solutions task force, a new consortium to advocate for affordable energy-efficient housing, a database of climate change outreach activities in Wisconsin, and the strengthening of connections between green and blue industries and higher education. The importance of building relationships between Tribal Nations and nonprofits, as

well as with state and federal government agencies, emerged from the track on Traditional Perspectives on the Environment. Another prime concern was educating non-indigenous people working on climate change about indigenous perspectives on the environment and partnering with Tribal Nations.

The collective desire for more collaboration raised questions about funding climate change actions, a constant challenge in climate change work. The opportunities available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act were at the forefront of those conversations.

The Climate & Energy Team will publish the climate action plan in March 2023, and will hold regional meetings to gather additional feedback and ideas from Wisconsin residents.

Jessica James is the Academy’s Climate & Energy Initiatives Program Coordinator. She joined the Academy in the fall of 2020 after graduating from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities with a BS in Environmental Sciences. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, running, and learning new things in the Northwoods.

Sharon Vanorny

Climate Fast Forward Conference collective art project.

1922 University Ave

Madison, WI 53726

Academy Courses are designed to bring people together for lifelong learning and personal enrichment. Our expert instructors cultivate an intimate atmosphere for learning and discussion for creative people at all levels of experience.

WRITING MEMOIR

Instructor: Marja Mills

Wednesdays April 12–May 31

6:00–8:00 pm • Virtual

Whether you hope to publish a memoir, chronicle periods of your life or record family stories, this supportive workshop focuses on how to write about your experiences with clarity and style, specificity and substance. Participants might be contemplating a book-length memoir or looking to write shorter pieces. New York Times bestselling memoirist Marja Mills will offer instruction, share excerpts from a variety of compelling memoirs and personal essays, and lead discussions on how to overcome obstacles and dilemmas.

TOTAL ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE DRAWING WORKSHOP

Instructor: Colin Matthes

Thursdays May 4–11

6:00–8:00 pm

Drawing is a way of thinking, and drawing is for everyone. Like writing, drawing clarifies and deepens our understanding. Join artist Colin Matthes for drawing workshop on using drawing as a tool to visualize and share knowledge. This workshop offers a fun, low-pressure environment in which to use drawing to research, remember, communicate, figure things out, and to make your own instructional drawings!