Emily Brisse

Midwestern lore has it that when the goldenrod blooms, it's time to return to school. Well, the fields are a-full of these plants, friends, so for me it's back to teaching. I do still hope to post at least once a week. We'll see.  A special thanks to all of you who have read along and commented this summer—whether online or in person. Writing is a solitary art; when I compose these words, it really is just me and the swallows twittering outside my window. So it's likely that whatever you've said to me about my crazy blog-world-endeavor, I remember it. When I doubt whether to press publish —because writing has always felt so private and personal—I think of your kind eyes on some other end of these internets, and I'm heartened. You have made sharing easier for me, and I guess the whole point of this post is just to say thanks.  You’re a good bunch. Be well, and enjoy your patch of home.

Being humble is a cultivated quality in many parts of Minnesota, so it's appropriate that "The Land of 10,000 Lakes" is an understated moniker. The official count of bodies of water that measure at more than ten acres is about 11,842. According to Wikipedia (gasp!), that amounts to more shoreline than California, Florida, and Hawaii combined. So, the only things that differentiate us from them are palm trees and salt water. And snow, I guess. And ice. But anyway, these lakes are their own kind of Eden, and it's a thing to be thankful for that most people, regardless of their socioeconomic state, have a circle of water within the reach of their legs or persuasive please-take-me powers. As my sweet grandma would say, that's nice. It's also nice (and fun) to skim over a list of lake names . Since I was small, it's charmed me to find that a lake and I could be called the same thing. Imagine dreaming you had a twin, and finding her blue and dancing, plump ...

In the morning the lake is dappled, full of sleepy light clinging to reeds and hiding among lily pads. I peer down and there are ten-thousand kingdoms: one is full of long arms twirling toward the water's top, another strains its fingers in ruler-straight lines, and an underwater cloud of mossy tendrils breathes as one, grows as one, should not be disturbed by a paddle. There are whole regions of shadow; down there it is cold and dark and deep. In the afternoon the light is loud, which gives everything else permission. The wind teases the surface, and the lake plunks at its touch, or laughs. The cattails and bullrushes bump their slim shoulders, shivering despite the heat. Fish leap from the water and bellyflop back. Dragonflies flit. Spiders spin. Always there is a boy of about ten unafraid of splinters racing down a wooden dock and catapulting himself through the light into the kind of dark he will be afraid of at night, but not now. Not under the hands of such a sun. Not when ...

. I read Sinclair Lewis' Main Street (1920) one year ago, and I can easily say that it was the book that got me roving down this "flyover land" road. It filled me with so many thoughts. Many times I wanted to reach into Lewis' Sauk Centre grave and shake the man awake, ask him if his Minnesota hometown was really that bad. Other times, I had to stay quiet, admit that his less-than-glowing observations were (from my own small-town experience) spot on. It's an interesting and important question for a writer: what do you choose to show? I guess, if you're honest, the best answer is "all of it." But we each see the world so differently. The moment you stop writing for yourself, you are bound to get something for someone else wrong. So, just tell the truth, then, in the ways you know how: an image, an emotion, a character, one word after another. I've always thought of you, Mr. Lewis, as the sullen boy at the back of the classroom, and I doubt if...

. As evidenced by many of the poems collected in Silence in the Snowy Fields ( 1962), Robert Bly looked toward the landscapes of Minnesota and often saw: Cornfields, cornstalks Catholic churches Box-elder trees, box-elder bugs Prairie grasses Chickens' eyes Dust Barns Norwegian immigrants Alfalfa fields Crickets Turkey sheds Telephone poles Corn stubble Perhaps not the most romantic list. And yet, the verses he called "Love Poem" go like this:       "When we are in love, we love the grass,      And the barns, and the light poles,      And the small mainstreets abandoned all night."  And to me, this seems exactly, simply, accurate . When we love — whether a person or a place — there is possibility for beauty in everything.

"Beneath the waters, since I was a boy, I have dreamt of strange and dark treasures, Not of gold, or strange stories, but the true Gift, beneath the pale lakes of Minnesota." -- Robert Bly From "After Drinking All Night"