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Parallel Press releases 'Sand Island Succession' by Judith Strasser

Posted 6/18/2002

Cover of Sand Island SuccessionMADISON, Wis.—Four years ago, Judith Strasser moved into a rustic cabin on Lake Superior. With no plumbing, she hauled water for cooking, dashed into the chilly lake to bathe and struggled to stay warm and dry on raw June days. She began to "hear the poems I promised to write" in exchange for this visit to "paradise" as poet-in-residence at the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.

Strasser seems to speak in two voices—her own and that of the islands. One voice details her personal experience. The other tantalizes the reader with glimpses of shipwrecks, vanished communities and distinctive local characters. So alive were these historic essences that they haunted Strasser's solitary days: "Always: The sense that someone/is calling, although/there's no telephone." And through her evocative lines, Strasser makes the reader hear these echoes, too.

This vivid collection—"Sand Island Succession: Poems of the Apostles"—is the newest chapbook released by the Parallel Press, an imprint of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.

Strasser recently retired as a senior producer and interviewer for "To the Best of Our Knowledge," a nationally distributed public radio program. She is a freelance writer and an interviewer for "Out Loud," the audio feature of the Poets & Writers Web site, and conducts poetry-writing workshops for adults and children. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Witness, and other literary magazines and anthologies. Her work has earned her numerous writing residencies, awards and grants.

"Sand Island Succession: Poems of the Apostles" is the third chapbook released by Parallel Press this year. Since 1998, Parallel Press has released 19 original chapbooks by various Wisconsin and Midwestern award-winning poets, including Ted Genoways, Max Garland and an upcoming selection from Jean Feraca.

Here is a poem from "Sand Island Succession: Poems of the Apostles":

"County Road"

The settlers are gone, cabins
rotted or burned. What remains:
the school house foundation,
moss-garden-capped concrete;
a Model T, sunk to its fenders,
kneeling under the trees.
A trail--

choked with balsam and alder,
roadbed rutted, muddy, sodden,
a permanent bog of memory
bordered by sentinel trees.

Penny candy from the co-op;
Noreng's berries, big as
hens' eggs, too juicy to ship
anywhere; dances--pump organ,
squeezebox, fiddle, everyone
at the school; crossing the ice-
bridge for mail; Mrs. Hill's
famous ham; the nor'easter
that took Harold Dahl.

Crawl over tree-trunks,
muck through jewel-weed,
tread bear scat in black berry brambles,
swim sedges over your head.
Lose the trace in the marsh. Turn back.
This is no wilderness. Still,
you've come to the end of the road.

Each Parallel Press chapbook is $10; annual subscriptions for six are $50. Please order by writing:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State St.
Madison, WI 53706

For more information, visit http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu or call 262-2600. E-mail inquiries may be sent to kfrazier@library.wisc.edu.

 

 

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