Tag Archives: Poet Scott Lowery

April 10, 2024 Announcing a Poetry Reading on 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at the Northfield Public Library–I Will Read with Poet Scott Lowery

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A big thank-you to Tyler Gardner of the Northfield Public Library for constructing this banner, and to Raymonde Noer for my author photo!

One of the best things about having other poets as friends is that when they publish books filled with thoughtful, insightful, musical poems you can be delighted for them. I met Scott Lowery many years ago in his then-home city of Winona. It was the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Competition that brought us together. We both have had winning entries. Scott’s work–whether in traditional forms, like sonnets, or in more organic shapes–is truly stand-out. I am delighted that he arranged for a reading to showcase Mutual Life (Finishing Line Press, 2023) here in Northfield so that you can meet him, too.

Scott’s work is topical yet timeless. Each of the twenty-three poems in his new collection shimmers with specific observation and language that manages to be at once flinty, spare, and distilled, yet also lush,  filled with melody, and extravagantly memorable. Taken together, these poems ponder how humans struggle through turbulent times, awash with keen (but often unarticulated) hungers for individual relevance and connection. This collection invites us to broaden our humanity, to look up and out, as well as deep within.

In addition to a selection of poems from Mutual Life, Scott will also share some of the poems in his award-winning collection, Empty-Handed, originally published in 2013 and recently reissued by its publisher, Northfield’s own Red Dragonfly Press. In fact, Scott’s idea is to make the event a little more “Northfield.” Scott and I realized that our work shares some key themes, including hometown life, a Minnesota sense of place, inspiration from the art of others, climate anxieity, and the lessons gained from family. When he asked me to share the podium for this event, we saw an opportunity for a reading in which our poems might have a kind of conversation with each other. It will be an experiment for us, and it is one I am looking forward to!

I hope that you can join us on Tuesday, May 7 to meet Scott and hear him read his wonderful poems. LESLIE

News Flash! THIRD WEDNESDAY Publishes “Poem in Which I Try, Very Hard, to Do My Own Bidding”

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The newest issue of Third Wednesday is out. Once again, I am dazzled by so many poems in its pages and proud to have one of my own included. In this issue, too, I have been especially impressed with the photography.

In the Spring 2019 (Vol. XII, No. 2) issue, I find it harder than ever to cite favorites — but I will anyway. Take a look at Steven Deutsch’s poem “Sam and Saul” about twin musical prodigies; or the frozen lake shore landscape of Scott Lowery’s meditative “Vacancy;” or Jeanie Mortensen’s look at the discrepancies between literature and life in “Dick and Jane;” or Ted Kooser’s consideration of time in “Red Stilts;”or Kathryn Jacobs’s startling perspective in “Calling All Lemmings.”

Like the poetry, the photography in this issue kept surprising and delighting me. My favorites range from the lyrical juxtaposition of a flower and an open book called “Birth” (by Fabrice Poussin) and a study of dunes and sky called “California Dreaming (also by Fabrice Poussin) to the subtle view of exhortatory texts plastered on a gated driveway and house called “Signs” (by Gary Wadley), to — maybe my favorite of all — a head and shoulders portrait called simply “Robert” (by David Jibson.) This one is arresting because it is at once utterly contemporary and positively classical, as though a Roman philosopher visits and observes contemporary complications with earned detachment.

My own poem, titled “Poem in Which I Try, Very Hard, to Do My Own Bidding,” was inspired by a poem by William Butler Yeats called “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” Perhaps, like me, you have memorized this gem? My own poem doesn’t echo so much the form of the poem as the way in which the heart can be split in its desire to live in two different places or modes at the same time, while recognizing the need to somehow integrate both rather than to choose.

Thank you for allowing me to share these thoughts with you! Leslie