There was no group singing involved:

The University of Minnesota wrapped up on Tuesday a four-day Dylan Symposium—which, being one of two University of Minnesota MFA representatives, I do believe I am obligated to record here. There is also that small matter of Dylan perhaps being the most well-known Minnesotan (aside from Garrison Keillor and Jesse "The Body" Ventura, probably) in the world—and the most well-known Minnesotan writer, as well.

The Symposium—in conjunction with the traveling museum exhibit called Bob Dylan's American Journey, 1956-1966—is called "Highway 61 Revisited: Dylan's Road from Minnesota to the World." Part of this symposium (the term "symposium" means "drinking party" in Greek; my partner-in-crime—fiction writer extraordinaire and fellow Dylanite, Ethan—to this symposium celebrated this fact by sneaking fat cans of cheap beer into a showing of Masked & Anonymous at the museum), and the major attraction for me was a bus tour to Hibbing, Minnesota, birthplace of Robert A. Zimmerman/Dylan.

Hibbing's isolation and size—at 16,509 people, it's approximately 35.656587473002 times my town's size—made me homesick. It was like taking a bus tour of the town near where I grew up to which my friends and I would travel to get our kicks—like watching those moving picture shows.

Once we got to Hibbing, we—Ethan and I—quickly found that we'd be on a tour that would have less to do with Bob and more to do with the town and the surrounding landscape. This was fine by me—many pieces of nonfiction deal with the landscape's effect on a person. Surely enough, during a panel discussion later in the weekend, Dylan scholar (and general musicologist and organizer of the Symposium) Colleen Sheehy suggested the connection between the wasted land curling around Hibbing and the apocalyptic imagery of Dylan's early music. She also intelligently posited the connection between the mine's product and how closely its success was tied to whether there was a war going on in the world. This image of war from the top down, Sheehy said, may have inspired Dylan's song "Masters of War"—which is, unfortunately, as timely now as it has ever been.

So, after a buffet lunch at Zimmy's (a Dylan-centric restaurant in downtown Hibbing that served such gems as "Time Out Of Mind Combo Appetizer" and "Highway 61 Pizza" and a truly terrifying layer-cake/sandwich (ask us in person, really)),


we rode out a ways from town to learn about Hibbing's iron strip mine.

The mine, the largest man-made hole in the world, did indeed look like a wasteland. The ground is so rich with iron that each chunk of rock torn from the ground was stained red—even the decorative rock lining the sidewalks of the mine observatory was red. Adding to the wasteland-esque scenery was the sharp angles of all the rock. None of it had been exposed for probably more than a century—not nearly enough time for wind and snow to soften jagged edges.



The mine, in its hey-day, was taxed by one enterprising mayor of Hibbing in the 1920s. He somehow finagled a fine deal out of the mining company: that it would be taxed not on the iron already out of the ground, but all of the iron still underneath the ground. This was, in short, a few (hundred) truckloads of money.

Truck used in mining. Picture it full of money, driving to Hibbing. Ethan for scale.

Between this tax and the bribery required to move the original town of Hibbing from the patch of iron it had its feet in, the mine built for the town—among other things—a four-million dollar school. Today's equivalent would be about 45 million dollars (if my internet inflation adjustor does not lie—what?—the internet never lies).

Part of that four-million dollar school is its auditorium. This auditorium is one of the first Dylan venues—in Dylan lore, he played the stage with his high school band, The Golden Chords. His first short concert was for a talent show, and they played a Little Richard song too hot for 1950s rural Minnesota. A teacher pulled the curtain on Dylan and his band.

The auditorium itself was gorgeous. You know how many words a picture is worth, so I'll just stop beating around the bush:



The tour was mainly focused on the town and, by extension, for me, the oddity of having a gem of a school in a town where the community's tax base (they no longer get any money from the mine) would barely cover the upkeep of the building. Of course, this was fascinating—though Ethan probably voiced all of our innermost feelings when he said that what mostly we want is to drink from the same water fountain that high-school Dylan drank from.

With the mine and the school out of the way, we went to the only other places significant to Dylan's early formative (and preformative, as it were) years: his house and the stage he played on in another talent show. Neither of these places—his house or this second stage—is immortalized in any way that would inhibit their functionality. In fact, there is no trace of Dylan on them, permanently, whatsoever. I'm not exactly surprised at this Midwestern utilitarianism that requires the every-day use of artifacts that most Dylanologists would rather keep under lock and key and Plexiglas.



Bob's childhood home had two small nods to its lineage: the CD player playing his music, and a coffee table, under whose glass top lay several different books on Dylan. While we tourists/salivating Dylan fans milled about in the living room, tracking early spring gravel into the rug, the sink ran in the kitchen—someone was washing the lunch dishes—and the present owner of the house stood, shaking hands and introducing himself.

Next, we went to the town's Memorial Hall to see the stage on which Dylan and his Golden Chords took second or third place in a different talent show. The group watched for a few minutes a group of woman were curling on the ice rink, and photographed them as if they were recording the first encounters with a newly-discovered tribe of Papua New Guineans.

Downstairs, we sat for a few minutes in a hot and stuffy, small auditorium, watching a few of our tour members jump up on the stage—the stage that looked like any other, functioning, small-town-hall stage, a place for awards, commemoration, but no commemoration of Dylan. Just meticulous care and upkeep of a stage now more than 50 years old.

The town seemed almost to willfully ignore that it produced an anomaly like Dylan—except for its once-yearly Dylan Days, a grassroots festival that celebrates the arts in northern Minnesota and the memorabilia-laden Zimmy's Café. Dylan was not just an anomaly for that town and age—he is, it seems, an anomaly of the human race altogether. While it is easy—as it was suggested by one of the symosium's panels—to see where Dylan's infamous interview-sidestepping sensibilities came from and the inspiration for songs like "Masters of War," "North Country Blues," "Girl from the North Country," and "The Ballad of Hollis Brown," it is of course inherently problematic to expect—perhaps as I did—to find his roots all in one place, to try to find his footsteps set in the cement of some sidewalk. He is as transcendent of landscape and town as his songs were—and continue to be—of their contemporaries.

Interview Project #8: Yuko Taniguchi

Quietude, as it relates to writing, may mean a number of things to any number of people, but when it comes to poetry, I find quietude to be the beautiful marriage of the aching and the serene. Which is one reason why I would use quietude to describe the poetry of Yuko Taniguchi. There's a halo of aching-ness in her poetry that goes beyond quietude, however. It's about longing, perhaps, or how to get the story "right." Her poems aren't quiet (in terms of subject or voice), but they move along a seemlingly predetermined trajectory toward a succinct, yearned-for revelation. And there's music...such sweet music.

Yuko's first book of poetry, Foreign Wife Elegy, is that harmonious trajectory. But the journey doesn't end there. In May, her novel, The Ocean in the Closet, will be out from Coffee House Press. As Chitra Divakaruni describes it, The Ocean in the Closet is "a beautiful and poignant novel that adroitly spans generations and continents to explore the intricate workings of the human heart in times of war and peace." Sounds pretty cool, wouldn't you say?

Read an excerpt from The Ocean in the Closet here. And read Yuko's take on the writing of her novel here.

How about some excerpts from Foreign Wife Elegy, too.

With the release of The Ocean in the Closet fast approaching, Yuko will be out and about for a number readings. Check here for dates and places near you.

On to the good stuff.

What are you working on these days? Any work coming out in the near or semi-near future?

I am working on my poetry manuscript, Breaking Rivers (tentative title). Many poems in this collection explore the stories/experiences of Hibakusha (victims of the Atom Bomb) in Hiroshima.

What sorts of things have you been reading?

Lately, I am reading many essays, novels and poems written by Hibakusha since I recently traveled to Hiroshima for my poetry project. For fun, I am reading a contemporary novel, Letter by Keigo Higashino, and a memoir, Eating Meals at the Battle Field by Kazutaka Sato. (Both texts are written in Japanese. I'm not sure if translations are available.) I also read Fall on your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald. I had a great time reading the entire 508 pages. I am also reading Rin Ishigaki's poetry.

Which writer would you say has had the biggest influence on your writing style?

I admire Anna Swir's poems that are simple and complex. I also admire the work of Rin Ishigaki, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Akiko Yosano, Kotaro Takamura, Wisława Szymborska, Czesław Miłosz, Li-Young Lee, Robert Hass, W.S. Merwin, James Wright, and many more...

How important is the specificity of place in your work?

Although I was always influenced by landscape, it is only recently that I concretely began writing about landscape and its power of affecting our emotions, memories and realizations.

I could relate to Dvorak's comment when he first arrived in Iowa: "It is very strange here. Few people and a great deal of empty space" (from Patricia Hampl's Spillville). When I first arrived in Minnesota—the vast land and sky grew endlessly ahead of me—I was immediately overwhelmed. This great space, what Trish called "American vastness" in her book, was my enemy, the source of my loneliness for a very long time. I always hoped to relocate to a place where there are hills, bridges and the ocean—perhaps San Francisco. I felt more familiar and comfortable with the space being interrupted by buildings and hills. For a very long time, I blamed the land for being so foreign, and I waited for the land to become familiar to me. Since it never became familiar, I wanted to move, but the truth turned out to be that I needed to walk into it.

Last year, I was lucky enough to receive the writing fellowship from the Blacklock Nature Sanctuary, which offers a two week residency at a house located in Moose Lake, MN. The house is set on over 550 acres of land including forests, one half-mile of lake shore on Little Moose Lake, beaver ponds, a heron rookery, as well as a beautiful assortment of wildflowers and wildlife. Although I was thrilled and honored to be selected as one of the fellows, I was very nervous about how well I would handle the nature and isolation (My husband was more worried about me since he knew that I was truly a city girl...).

While I was in Moose Lake, I looked closely at the landscape, the forest, and the change of the land’s appearance at different times. Soon, I was obsessed about the water stream in rivers, the movement of wind and how it affected the movement of all the plants, the color of sky, how long it took for the redness to disappear from the sky in the evening etc. Then everything—trees, flowers, wind, wild animals—seemed like the metaphor of something to me, and I wrote poems after poems everyday. I even woke up with immense joy!

Interestingly, this experience actually helped me realize why I write about music. I knew how nature inspired many composers. For example, Dvorak had a routine of walking in the morning and listening to birds singing. Tchaikovsky often took his afternoon walk alone, climbing the hills in search of the solitude. He sent a letter to his patron Nadejda van Meck with dry petals of lily-of-the-valley": "They will remind you of the South, the sun, sea warmth...There in the woods I was completely happy and immediately it was necessary to tell you about it." While I stayed in Moose Lake, I could understand how standing in the midst of birds singing and fresh air would fill one with energy. I could also understand how such energy would inspire composers to capture this moment into music. Letting the land and nature be a part of my life felt familiar, like the feeling I often get from listening to string instruments.

While I was in Moose Lake, the war started in Lebanon. I listened to National Public Radio reporting the war everyday. Since then, wherever I was, even at the most peaceful spot on the hill overlooking the river and forest, I thought of the men, women, and children who were surrounded by the terrible sounds of jets, bombs, and fire. While I felt helpless and I couldn’t do anything about the conflict and violence, at the very least, I wanted to be aware of the reality, of those who struggle hundreds of miles away. Even such a foreign concept, I touched through nature. When I came by the St. Louis River, I thought of the citizens who ran to the river in fire—a nightmare that many citizens experienced over the years and it was happening again. The opposite of violence is a prayer for peace, which was something that I could give through poetry. This is how I started working on my next project, Breaking Rivers.

Regarding your own work, do you have a favorite and/or most-representative piece?

I would say "Elegy for Cello and Orchestra by John Williams."

If your work were to be made into a film, who would direct it?

Patrice Leconte who directed The Widow of Saint Pierre.

If you were a character from Shakespeare, which one would you be?

Princess Kathleen from Henry V. When I first read Henry V 10 years ago, I was amazed by the sense of humor that was suddenly added by Kathleen’s character at the end of this play. I even wrote a poem about it ("Henry the Handsome V" in Foreign Wife Elegy).

How would you describe your time spent as an MFA student?

While I was at the U of M, I learned a great deal. I was just out of college, so I didn't know much about anything. I am mostly grateful for all the new reading materials that I was introduced to, especially Spanish and Polish poetry in translation. Every class I attended, I took something with me.

You meet someone for the first time and they ask you the proverbial, "So, Yuko, what is it that you do?" What do you tell them?

Nowadays, I do say that I'm a writer.

Favorite poetic form?

Couplet.

Best first line to a story or novel?

"The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country; the earth lay white under the night sky." —Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

(Unfortunately, this line in translation from Japanese doesn't quite explore the way the Japanese line captures the wonderful image of a train going through darkness and suddenly being in the middle of the completely white world.)

What was the genesis behind writing a novel?

I wrote a short story with a nine year old narrator, Helen, while attending Julie Schumacher's Child Narrators course. Helen's voice was very intriguing, so I let her tell her stories, which became the beginning of The Ocean in the Closet. I fell in love with her voice exploring her wonders and imagination, and through listening to her voice, she became more and more real.

Does being a poet help or hinder your approach to writing prose?

I used everything that I learned from poetry and had to learn more to finish a novel.

Can you talk a little about the research you did for The Ocean in the Closet?

I have heard many stories about Japanese-American immigration over the years, and they have been always quite memorable. The darkness of Helen's family, especially her disturbed mother and her disconnected father, is connected with the struggles I have known about Japanese immigrants. But to continue with this novel, I needed to know more about them. While I researched the experiences of Japanese immigrants on the West Coast, I found out about many biracial Japanese children who were adopted by American families starting in the 1950s and 60s. I was taken by the life stories of these individuals, and their experiences helped shape and develop specific characters in my mind. I spent a year reading many historical texts, articles, memoirs, and essays, watching documentary films, and conducting interviews with people from similar backgrounds. I took many pages of notes and tried to absorb all the details. I wanted to gain the memories of the characters. Once I started writing again, I barely returned to my notes from my research. I let my new memories guide the novel to develop its own life. I returned to my notes only after the novel was completely done, to make sure of its accuracy and consistency.

Favorite landscape?

The ocean under the blue sky. It doesn't have to be a specific view from a specific place. I just love looking at the ocean.

Can you talk about the story behind the publication of your first book, Foreign Wife Elegy?

Foreign Wife Elegy was my MFA thesis. I worked with Jim Moore who helped me realize and identify what I was trying to do through this project. After I graduated from the U of M, I continued to revise my manuscript. When I felt that I did as much as I could, I mailed it to five publishers who published the writers I admired. Coffee House Press was one of them, and they were kind enough to accept my manuscript.

Poetry's Un-doing

A couple of weeks back, the crew was down in Atlanta for the AWP conference. And while I can't (and don't presume to) speak for my cohorts, it was the best darn 3 days this side of games 2–4 of the 2003 NLCS.

I dig all sorts of poetry (genre-fy it if you like: narrative, prose, lyric, formal, fractured, short-line, long-line, dropped-line, etc.), but what I dig the most is when poetry un-does me. Sure, there are more objective ways to discuss or "evaluate" poems, but I'm a sentimental guy who's sweet on the un-doing. Poetry doesn't have to break me, but I like to be broken. And when it hits me, it feels o so nice. Which is why those 3 days in Atlanta were so beautiful.

The quick hits of un-doing:


• Hearing Patrick Phillips read from Chattahoochee for the first time, and then a second time 2 days later. The lingering ache of "My Lovely Assistant."

• Hearing Jake Adam York read "Substantiation." Damn if I didn't wish it would go on almost-forever.

• Hearing Natasha Trethewey at the same Greensboro Review reading as Jake and Patrick.


• Reading Kristy Bowen's Feign at 2am in the hotel lobby.


• Reading more pieces from Joshua Poteat's J. G. Heck's 1851 Pictorial Archive of Nature and Science in the new issue of Copper Nickel. Heck, the whole darn issue of Copper Nickel, really (Mathias Svalina, Gina Franco, Noah Eli Gordon, Jen Lamb, Allison Titus, etc. etc.).


• Getting my hands on NMP's re-print of The Moon is a Lighthouse by Peter Markus. I, of course, swoon.

And lastly, to everyone who stopped by the Dislocate table or chatted with me in hallways, at panels, or at their respective book fair tables, it was a humble pleasure. To meet those I writerly-adore, or those who publish the words I dig so much, it was, simply, a beautiful time.

Postmodern Poon

I have this book entitled "Postmodern Pooh," which is a series of parodies of literary theory -- a bunch of people interpreting "Winnie the Pooh" in all sorts of different ways, cleverly showing that literary analysis sometimes leads to lots of different and ridiculous interpretations! Hilarious! My parents gave it to me. I've never read it. I have a bunch of English major friends out there whose parents also thought this would be a hilarious present for them. It's like the literary equivalent of a gift of fancy soaps or something. It's neat, and weird, but at the end of the day, it’s like, "Oh, goody! Strangely shaped soap!" And then you put it in your bathroom drawer and forget about it and keep using your bar of dove.

Anyway, everytime my roommate sees the spine, she thinks it says "Postmodern POON," which is a little bit different. She told me this, and it made me think of a conversation I'd had awhile ago with an ex, about how awesome it would be if you could cover for shitty sexual technique in the same way you can cover for shitty literary technique -- by evoking postmodernism. Not that there isn't great postmodern literature out there, but, like abstract art, it's easy to use as a cover for crap. I've done it myself.

So, what would "postmodern poon" be like?

"Okay, I guess you just didn't GET what I trying to do there."

"So....you didn't have an orgasm, but that wasn't what I was GOING FOR. That is such a derivative cliche."

"It's not my fault if you don't understand my vision."

"Why does sex HAVE to be good? Who made up that rule? The bourgeois literary establishment? I was trying to subvert your expectations."

"Sorry. I was just trying to make you question your metaphysical reality."

Other examples of postmodern poon:

-Refusing to have sex, and just sitting in the corner of the room in silent misery

-Providing an ironic, self-aware commentary the whole time ("Yeah, um, are you going to do it....that way? Okay, whatever")

-Refusing to have sex in the usual order, because narrative structure is a lie.

-Dressing up as pop-culture icons or cartoon characters (which, actually, makes those people that dress up like stuffed animals kind of the heroes of postmodern poon).

-Keeping silent the entire time, because there is nothing new to say.

-Or, alternatively, repeating random series of repeititve words and images the entire time: "Black black darkness darkness Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe darkness darkness darkness"

-Insisting on keeping on your clothes the whole time, becausing every "disrobing" is just another "enclothing."

-If the person doesn't call you insist that it's not because they didn't like having sex with you, but just that, existentially speaking, there is no "outside the sex."

So, that, my friends, is postmodern poon. You never have to feel anxious or insecure about your sexual technique again! Remember, you're just too deep for them to get you. Quote Derrida, and cut and run!