ongoing debate. Immediately I knew that I had been arguing and debating with my own culture in similar ways. Holm’s culture was Icelandic and rural while mine was Southern and had to do with slavery and the South coming to Chicago. There were many messages that I should reject that [culture], grow up and transform myself into something else. Read- ing Holm made me sensitive to that: you are where you came from. That clicked with me. Lutherans don’t like conflict, and Bly and those guys would come in and want to blow up the place, at least rhetorically. Carol and Robert would affirm their culture at the same time they were taking it to task. It’s not comfortable literature. It wants to engage you, argue with you, speak frankly and clearly with you, and bring in a lot of things from the out- side that have an effect on it. That’s why they are important writers.
Deb Lund
Todd Boss thinks of his poems, which deal with growing up on a farm, marriage, parenting and more, as prayers. In between prayers, he may be found drinking coffee or organizing poetry readings at Nina’s Cafe in St. Paul, Minn.
In 1970, I heard author and poet Robert Bly read with the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. Trans- trömer would read in Swedish, qui- etly, and then Bly would do a loud English version, arms flailing, very demonstrative and dramatic. He reminded me of a Lutheran minister, imploring his flock to do better. From their little perch in Madison,
24 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org
Minn., Robert and Carol Bly were a formidable force, a great example of what could be farmed and harvested in their own backyard, not provin- cially but by making the local and the foreign comfortable with each other. When I read Bill Holm’s Music
of Failure (University Of Minnesota Press, 2010), I saw that he had a love/ hate relationship with his culture, an
Lutheran connection: Member and musician of Trinity Lutheran Church, Freeland, Wash. Genre: Children’s literature. Titles: Four books, most recently Dino- sailors (Harcourt Chil-
dren’s Books, 2003) and All Aboard the DinoTrain (Sandpiper, 2009). Bio: A musician, teacher and school librarian, Lund landed her first book contract after a friend asked her to write prayers for children that used inclusive language and focused on grace.
I write rollicking, rhyming, rowdy books about a group of dinosaurs who head off on different adventures. Along the way, the characters learn
BECCA DILLEY
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