April 13: Poet of the Week, Judith Minty, "Yellow Dog Journal"

Yes, I am naming a new Poet of the Week tonight.

I met Judith Minty almost twenty years ago.  She visited a poetry workshop I was in, and, later that night, I had a few drinks with her.  I remember her being incredibly funny and smart.  The more I drank, the smarter and funnier she became.

One of my favorite poetry collections ever is Minty's Yellow Dog Journal, a series of poems based on her time living in a cabin on the Yellow Dog River in the Upper Peninsula, about thirty miles from my house.  I took this slim little volume off my bookshelf last night, started reading, and fell in love with Judith Minty all over again.

There are no titles to the poems in the book.  They are simply numbered in two sections:  Fall and Spring.

Saint Marty is going to start with a few selections from Fall.

1

400 miles into north land, driving hard
like a runaway, each town peeling away the woman skin,
turning me pale and soft, as if I
had never married, had not
been planted twenty years in the suburbs.

I come here as my father's child, back
down his rutted road, through a cave of sagging timber
to the clearing.  Nothing changed.
His land, his shack leaning over the riverbank,
the Yellow Dog barking home to Superior.

3

My father's slippers, found
in a trunk, now mine to wear.
Too large, creases in the leather
barely touch the flesh.
I slide my toes to the end, along the old ridges.

His feet clump over linoleum floor
table to dishpan, woodbox to stove.
Only the scrap of rug by the door
muffles his presence.

On the Yellow Dog