Emily Brisse

This essay can now be found in the 2012 edition of The Talking Stick. It received an honorable mention designation. I'm happy to have it there!

To be of the Earth is to know the restlessness of being a seed the darkness of being planted the struggle toward the light the pain of growth into the light the joy of bursting and bearing fruit the love of being food for someone the scattering of your seeds the decay of the seasons the mystery of death and the miracle of birth. -- By John Soos

New Reader/Follower/Bookmark Alert, especially for those of you with a penchant for the outdoors: Editor Ben Smith was kind enough to include my essay "Winter, Walking" in the early stages of The Backcountry Journal , a wonderful online composite of place-inspired words and images. There's great stuff here: hiking, fishing, hunting, exploration. Do hope you check it out . And hope you're enjoying the snow!

Many thanks to Roadside Poetry's organizer, Paul Carney, and my mom, ever the intrepid photographer. Happy Thanksgiving, all!

You said it was a twelve-house town. Did you call it town? No sé . You’ve been speaking in English and I’ve been attempting Spanish and there are details we’ve lost to effort, that we’ve grinned over, our hair flying around us in time to the bus’s bumps along the narrow road, the thick air coming in the open windows. “I grew up here, just around here. There were twelve houses and a soccer field. Very peaceful.” “ Paz ,” I say. You smile. “See that?” You’ve been pointing out the agricultural fields as we pass them, a serious job as they’re everywhere, on the right and the left, stretching for kilometers. Coffee. Plantains. Cassava. Hectares of pineapple. You described how volcanic ash has enriched the soil, how the area is flush with large ranches and small family fincas . As we’ve traveled, I’ve watched men with machetes at their hips, some slashing their silver blades in strong strokes mere meters from the road. “See that? Sugar cane.” “ Azúcar ,” I say. You smile again,...

When I was younger, I used to believe that out of everyone I knew, I was the only one who not only appreciated nature, but loved  it, pined for it, understood it as a perfect part of life. I talked to the trees. Yes, I was one of those .  I could spend hours by myself in the woods, or by a stream, or watching the light shift across the surface of a lake. My first memory is of a mountain landscape in Montana, the feeling of the wind rushing up my legs, the blueness of the sky. I began this blog for several reasons, but it was naive to not count among them connection with other "place people." I didn't know. I didn't even guess that fifteen months from its inception, this blog would have introduced me to complete strangers who now feel like friends, and friends who are now ever-more-deeply that because we've had cause to discuss and share about things that before just somehow never came up. I didn't know that what I'd most appreciate a year later about thi...

that night we lay on air sultry as an Egyptian's exhale. Nothing stirred but firefly wings and our gentle fingers, figuring at the throb and pulse that electrified such small bodies with sparks. Their glimmer laced the lake's edge like a necklace, like lookout smoke, and we drifted tranquil within, at peace with each other, our unwearied lips. The water was blue-black beneath us, a veiled mirror underneath the cloak of sky, light discovering light only when we moved. -- by Emily Brisse, originally published in The Talking Stick , Vol. 20, Editor's Choice award

Thanks to Chris Johnson, the Center for Servant Leadership at Gustavus, and the amazing and beautiful Prairie Oaks Institute in Belle Plaine for an incredible weekend: retreat, rejuvination, reflection, and old and new friends--"live encounters," every one. 

When I was in fifth grade, the rough kids went out behind the middle school building, down to the footbridge that crossed over the stream, and smoked beneath it. I have memories of their black-leather-clad backs, their furtive glances before they’d duck under and step down on the rocks. Later my brother and I would find the stubs of their cigarettes, muddied and stained with red-lipstick. We often wondered, when we sat beneath the bridge ourselves, if their pack would ever show up when we were there, drop from the trail like a thick cloud, and surround us in their haze and age.   The last time I was in my hometown, I returned to the stream. It had been years, maybe, since I’d walked the banks, strolled with my hand out, tapping the chest-high grasses and small  sunflowers, blazed though the mass and tangle to the water’s edge just like my brother and I had done during so many days in my childhood. It threw me, as I should have anticipated, to see how changed it all was,...

Earlier this week I lead my creative writing students through the creation of a four-line, twenty-characters-a-piece poem inspired by one of the four seasons. Why? Oh, because of this small little fantastically awesome thing that’s happening up in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, called Roadside Poetry . I’d stumbled upon RP's website and mission in August, and I immediately knew it was something I’d use in my classroom. I mean, a short poem, a challenging riddle-like form, a stretch of pavement, and four billboards? Surely one of those would get teenagers writing. It had worked for me. The happy news is that my own submission to Roadside Poetry has been accepted for this autumn. In a few short days, the beginnings of 90,000 sets of eyes will drive past my verses and maybe, hopefully, read them, think about beauty instead of dinner, see the leaves instead of their cell phones, consider change as an image instead of a stress. Paul Carney, the coordinator of Roadside Poetry, said that...

Today I have returned to my students. I'm always surprised, after the exhaustion of spring, to discover how much I've missed them, how excited I am to be back in the classroom, teaching. I've spent the past month preparing for the next nine, and somewhere between notes on A Farewell to Arms  and rethinking my lead-in lesson on perspective, I reread the critical thesis I wrote two summers ago. I called it "Landing: A Focus on Place in Flyover Fiction." In it, I examined first place--how it's created in writing, effective techniques, etc.--and second those writers from my flyover state who seem to have a handle on such things. I wrote it as a writer for other writers. But this time, because of the headspace I was in, I read it as a teacher, and my planning from that day on changed. Later, I read in the most recent issue of Orion  Erik Reece's essay "The Schools We Need." He talked about many things, but the paragraph that stood out to me was th...

Early August, and the young butternut is already dropping its leaves, the nuts thud and ring on the tin roof, the squirrels are everywhere. Such richness! It means something to them that this tree should seem so eager to finish its business. The voice softens, and word becomes air the moment it is spoken. You finger the limp leaves. Precisely to the degree that you have loved something: a house, a woman, a bird, this tree, anything at all, you are punished by time. Like the tree, I take myself by surprise. -- By John Engels

When your hands go out, love, toward mine, what do they bring me flying? Why did they stop at my mouth, suddenly, why do I recognize them as if then, before, I had touched them, as if before they existed they had passed over my forehead, my waist? Their softness came flying over time, over the sea, over the smoke, over the spring, and when you placed your hands on my chest, I recognized those golden dove wings, I recognized that clay and that color of wheat. All the years of my life I walked around looking for them. I went up the stairs, I crossed the roads, trains carried me, waters brought me, and in the skin of the grapes I thought I touched you. The wood suddenly brought me your touch, the almond announced to me your secret softness, until your hands closed on my chest and there like two wings they ended their journey. -- By Pablo Neruda For my dear brother and his darling in honor of their new marriage.  Much love to you both!

In the morning we drive. It's hot and sticky, something I mind only in a vague way--it's just the world working--but because it's my husband beside me, and as he's reminded me a thousand times, he can't take his skin off, we have the air conditioner on, the windows up, the changing landscapes passing us by in glimpses and sun-soaked blurry scenes. We're smiling, singing old high school songs. Neither of us have spent time in southeast Minnesota before. It's always been southwest-leading roads, beckoning northeast shores, that deep central heart of the state dotted with lakes. But we keep hearing about the Root River Valley . For some reason, there's a pull, so we've fueled the car, packed crisp apples, and now follow lines on a map. First, we pass through farm country that looks no different than the central and western plots we've known our whole lives. There are new names, though: Hampton, Cannon Falls, Zumbrota, Pine Island. We ask each othe...

We like to go for bike rides when the sun is sinking and everything swims in light. There are wheels under us, but aside from the ends of sidewalks--bump down, bump up--we could be floating along a quick river. Maybe we are. "Name the colors that we pass: Go!" Golden red, golden green, golden yellow, golden gold, a coppery blue. In August, after a summer of good rain, everything seems to blend together in a gnarly mash of arms and leaves and branches and legs. It's all touching, straining after another finger, another wrist. We ride by and see ten-thousand embraces. We are all a little bit desperate this time of year. We still have weeks of heat. But nothing is endless. Not even the sun. When we glide home there are stars, and we whisper.

It's all there if we just slow down enough to look. 

I could say I had a hard time selecting my final Thirty Before Thirty "set in Minnesota" book. I could talk about John Hassler or Patricia Hampl or Carol Bly. I could write a very cerebral review, I suppose--you know, go out with some literary chops. But I'm a sucker for kids books. Minnesota's Hidden Alphabet  came out in late 2010 to much fanfare, and it's been reviewed in multiple places , so the only thing I can really add to this conversation is another dose of love. Photographer Joe Rossi traveled the wild corners of the state in search of letters etched in the landscape, in the bodies of trout lilies, in the ears of cottontail rabbits. David LaRochelle's text matches up with the photos in clever ways ("Overhead or on the ground, Peeking, sneaking all around, Quietly these letters lie, Ready for your roving eye.") and adds in fun facts (There's a wildflower called butter-and-eggs . Who knew?). It's a book you could read in three mi...

ablaze, afire, ardent, bake,   bask,   blaze , blood-hot,  boil,   broil,  calefaction,  calidity , canicular,  calorify,   chafe ,  char, close,  combustible, desire, diaphoretic,  dog  days, ebullient,  enflame,  enkindle, estiferous, excitement, ferocity, fervor,   fever,   fieriness, fire,  flame ,  flush ,  frizzle,   fry, fury, glow,  grill, grow hot,  heatwave,   HOT ,  hot  spell ,  hot  weather,   hot as pepper,  ignite,  incalescence,  incandescence, incinerate, inflame,  intensity, kindle, melt, molten, on fire, oppressive, oxidate,  passion, perspire, piping hot, plutonic, rage, roast,  scald, scorch, scumfished,  sear, seethe, set on fire, singe, smoking, smoldering,  sodden, steam, stifling, stuffy, suffocating,  sultriness, sun,  swelter, tepefy, toast,  torrid,  torrid...

The Big Woods. In the early 1800s, pre-settlement, huge stretches of Minnesota were covered in dense elm, basswood, sugar maple, and oak stands. When the French explorers came here, they noticed that these trees were taller and larger than those in many of the other forests they'd traveled through, so bois grand , they said. Big woods. Big, beautiful woods, I said, as I walked along the extensive trails at Lake Rebecca Park Reserve , just outside of Delano. My mother and I had met there for a picnic: chicken salad and crackers, a green apple, fresh-picked strawberries, and cold water. As we explored the quiet beach, the busy playground, and the shady walkways, I thought about those early-1800s years and how Minnesota looked then. One of my childhood dreams was to be an explorer, to walk over land few had seen. Although the many acres that make up Lake Rebecca Park were discovered long ago, ambling through it gave me a bit of that experience, because--what is  up ahead of that be...

What do you say to an island?  Hello. Hello, there.   I came to say... Yes? Just hello, I guess. Hello. And what is it like and how does it feel and what are the sounds and smells and tastes of being here so always, so all-year-everyday, so long? It is like... Yes? This. When I canoe across the wide water, when I slide into the bay, along its shore, I pay attention. I notice muskrats and blackbirds, fish flopping, and wind. I think about its name-- Loon --and its location-- south --and I wonder at the way it was when those northern birds were here enough to leave their name. How much changes on an island like this? No houses, no campers, no impervious surfaces. Just green and brown and blue and green and green and green and green. What is it like to be so set apart? To have children watch you every summer of their lives, curious and wise? And then for them to go away, sometimes for long stretches of time, only to come back older and quieter and less brave? Does the isla...

And yes, they taste as good as they look. Yaaaow!