Door County Authors – Three For the Reading

By some happy confluence of the stars, or more likely the application of determined individual inspiration and perspiration, in the last year or so, a number of local poets have seen their work collected, bound and offered up to any and all who have an eye for poetry. Here are a few words about the latest editions to have found their way to my desk.

Arriving When I Do by Charles Sully. The title comes from Chuck’s life-long adventure sailing on big water. Anyone who has ever sailed knows something of that adventure and Chuck writes about it with a kind of short hand that speaks volumes – you can taste the wind when you read him. In this collection he honors his wife and his daughter as well, Christy and Kolina, by name. Finally, there is the passion he has for this earth, for loving it, serving it and saving it. His preacher poems are not his best poems, but they are important, especially if the time we have to save the planet is as short as some are saying. Still, my favorite Sully is the singer of love songs to the earth, to fresh baked bread, to his family and his cats.

Those who have spent any time sailing know of the constant rhythm of water, both fresh and salt. It is like the music of Bach flowing through time as a single, unending thought reaching and returning, a breathing with the moonlight and the tides…the perpetual motion of arrivals and departures. This is what Sully writes about, whether he’s singing his autobiography, describing a hair raising encounter with the sea (inland or otherwise), taking account of the life pattern of bread rising, baking and cooling, or appreciating the presence of cats. He is fully engaged, amazed and alive to the power, the need, the joy of being a witness to the world. Arriving When I Do is a slim volume; a completely hand made book with actual photographs pasted to the page, some fine poems by Kolina, and a great picture of Chuck with one of his feline friends. Like so many small things, it is a treasure.

Psalms is Ralph Murre’s second book in as many years. It is the debut offering by Little Eagle Press of Sturgeon Bay whose stated mission is to "occasionally publish little books of quality…which may be found in a tiny, dim shop with a bright shopkeeper." This publication brings Ralph’s poems and drawings together for the first time, and not a moment too soon. If Sully journeys out, Murre journeys in and his words and images play into and off each other – a kind of total theater of the spirit. As perplexed as he is with the modern world, he is not about to give up on it, nor forget the cognitive and aesthetic dexterity that it takes to make, break, and gravitate through the past and maybe even beyond on a jazzy gyroscope of language and memory. Psalms are, of course songs, and this book is just that, a collection of verbal and visual events that feel like songs and sound like songs and look like music but may not be music at all. (Once you’ve read the book you’ll know what that means.) One page leads to another – a can’t stop phenomenon like freshly cooled dark cherries, chocolate covered hazelnuts, or Lloyd Alexander books. I couldn’t stop until I got to the end and still wanting to, I just started all over again. Bravo Murre. And Bravo Little Eagle Press.

If Ralph’s Psalms have to be swallowed whole, Alive with Dandelions, Rusty McKenzie’s new book, conjures the feeling of small blown glass objects that need to be looked at, put down and returned to again and again. Indeed, there is an arc to the book, a story, a beginning, middle and end, but the pieces that build towards the whole are so well wrought, so deftly and delicately accomplished that they have to be sorted, appreciated, taken out and put back in the velvet bag of admiration over and over again. One of the big questions that haunts my own work goes like this: Are we a part of or apart from nature? The simple passage of time, year after year, should be enough to remind us where we belong. Add to that the experience of loss, recovery, healing and re-entry and there can be no question. The fullness, compassion, and bravery of Dandelions is both breath taking and life giving. I feel blessed to have read it.

So, here we have the early harvest so far, Sully, Murre, and McKenzie. Can’t wait to see where we go from here.