{"title":"Bart Sutter","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"chester-creek-ravine-1","title":"Chester Creek Ravine","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe early Japanese haiku masters were indefatigable walkers. Basho traveled 1 500 miles to produce a single slim volume \u003cem\u003eThe Narrow Road to the Deep North.\u003c\/em\u003e In a rootless 21st century society obsessed with mobility and speed Bart Sutter decided to combine Basho's practice with Thoreau's sage advice to \"stay home.\" In writing \u003cem\u003eChester Creek Ravine \u003c\/em\u003e he says \"I walked at least a thousand miles but I did it by covering the same 2.5 mile loop through Chester Creek Ravine repeatedly catching it right down the block.\" Occasionally during those neighborhood walks Sutter had fleeting moments when the inner and the outer worlds came together in a flash of intimate imagery.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 150 haiku contained in this book-tiny poems with large implications-conjure those revelatory moments alongside Chester Creek a stream that drops dramatically through the city of Duluth on its final run to Lake Superior. Sutter honors the haiku tradition by sticking close to the classical form alluding to the seasons and choosing subjects from the natural world but his haiku are fully contemporary and include surprises too-a pregnant girl with her black lab beer cans bagpipes plastic sacks-while his subtle use of rhyme helps rivet these impressions in the reader's mind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBart Sutter\u003c\/strong\u003e received the Minnesota Book Award for poetry with \u003cem\u003eThe Book of Names: New and Selected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e for fiction with\u003cem\u003e My Father's War and Other Stories\u003c\/em\u003e and for creative non-fiction with \u003cem\u003eCold Comfort: Life at the Top of the Map\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmong other honors he has won a Jerome Foundation Travel \u0026amp;amp Study Grant (Sweden) a Loft-McKnight Award and the Bassine Citation from the Academy of American Poets. In 2006 he was named the first Poet Laureate of Duluth. He has written for public radio he has had four verse plays produced and he often performs as one half of The Sutter Brothers a poetry-and-music duo. Bart Sutter lives on a hillside overlooking Lake Superior with his wife Dorothea Diver.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Nodin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321547137174,"sku":"9781935666752","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_8974f599-31fe-47df-a4f4-4f588d93d0d9.jpg?v=1642155826"},{"product_id":"nordic-accordion-1","title":"Nordic Accordion","description":"\u003cp\u003eAll of Bart Sutter's grandparents spoke Swedish.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn his earliest years he heard old people talk Norwegian in farm kitchens and on the streets in town and there were Finns Danes and Icelanders in the neighborhood too. The music of these Nordic languages got inside Sutter's head he also inherited the homesickness of old-timers who spoke about a legendary land they called The Old Country. In \u003cem\u003eNordic Accordion\u003c\/em\u003e Sutter fulfills the covenant he made with his elders long ago-to dramatize critique and honor their struggles their culture their peculiar ways. The book explores the experience of Scandinavian immigrants their ancestors and their descendants.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA few of the stories to be found in Nordic Accordion:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-A Swedish runaway listens to Italian opera while gutting fish.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-Two old Norwegians meet at a funeral and romance results.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-Icelanders drop over a cliff to collect seabird eggs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-An American writer speaks to a dead Finnish poet and invites her home.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt the heart of the book lies a cycle of dramatic monologues by old women about their half-pagan younger years as cowherds in the mountain pasture camps of Sweden. \"This \" says David Ray of Sutter's work \"is poetic storytelling at its best.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBart Sutter\u003c\/strong\u003e received the Minnesota Book Award for poetry with \u003cem\u003eThe Book of Names: New and Selected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e for fiction with\u003cem\u003e My Father's War and Other Stories\u003c\/em\u003e and for creative non-fiction with \u003cem\u003eCold Comfort: Life at the Top of the Map\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmong other honors he has won a Jerome Foundation Travel \u0026amp; Study Grant (Sweden) a Loft-McKnight Award and the Bassine Citation from the Academy of American Poets. In 2006 he was named the first Poet Laureate of Duluth. He has written for public radio he has had four verse plays produced and he often performs as one half of The Sutter Brothers a poetry-and-music duo. Bart Sutter lives on a hillside overlooking Lake Superior with his wife Dorothea Diver.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Nodin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41321611657366,"sku":"9781947237049","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/img_proxy_63d99c9d-2e9a-4437-ba8b-090c3849936f.jpg?v=1642159146"},{"product_id":"so-surprised-to-find-you-here-poems","title":"So Surprised to Find You Here","description":"\u003cp\u003eBart Sutter's new poems embody a series of surprises. Why should a walk through a woodland bog call up the names and faces of first-grade girls? What's it like to be a one-year-old who's crawled beneath a grand piano while it's being played? Or an arborist, sky-high up a tree, who's suddenly attacked by killer bees? How come a Lutheran congregation worships at a boulder in the woods? Isn't this what poetry is for—situations, people, moments that take us by surprise and will not let us go?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow in his seventies, Sutter is haunted by lost friends and places, so this book has an elegiac undertone which only heightens the celebrations—of kelp on a California beach, a sexual awakening, a grandson's messy mastery of solid food. The book is rich with stories, and their settings range from the poet's home ground in northern Minnesota to the backroads of New Mexico, to Ireland and Spain.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt home, as well as in his travels, Sutter finds those transcendent moments that keep us going, despite our disappointments and discouragements.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBart Sutter\u003c\/strong\u003e received the Minnesota Book Award for poetry with \u003cem\u003eThe Book of Names: New and Selected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e, for fiction with \u003cem\u003eMy Father's War and Other Stories\u003c\/em\u003e, and for creative non-fiction with \u003cem\u003eCold Comfort: Life at the Top of the Map\u003c\/em\u003e. Among other honors, he has won a Jerome Foundation Travel \u0026amp; Study Grant (Sweden), a Loft-McKnight Award, and the Bassine Citation from the Academy of American Poets. In 2006, he was named the first Poet Laureate of Duluth. He has written for public radio, he has had four verse plays produced, and he often performs as one half of The Sutter Brothers, a poetry-and-music duo. Bart Sutter lives on a hillside overlooking Lake Superior with his wife, Dorothea Diver.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Not every poet is lucky enough to have the gift of naming, but I trust Bart Sutter when he speaks of 'all the colors we are given by this world,' when he names animals, birds and fish, trees, grasses and flowers, mist and rain and snow. In thumbnail portraits of friends, family members, neighbors, people encountered on the street, artists whose work deeply moved him, he looks with humor, love, acceptance, grief and sometimes exasperation at human perfection and imperfection. So Surprised to Find You Here has given me new eyes and ears.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eIlze Kļaviņa Mueller\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Sutter is a reserved Swede canoeist grandfather from Duluth, yet his canny rhythms, rhymes, slant rhymes—music really!—move like some excitable dancer from Bulgaria through stories of the Canadian borderlands, Sweden, Ireland, Spain, the woods, and home.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eJames P. Lenfestey\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"So Surprised to Find You Here is a travelogue of a life, a tour de force moving us from age to age, a tour of museums that includes the secret passageways deep into the paintings and then onward into our souls. At one point, after viewing a painting by Joaquin Sorolla, Sutter tells us that he has been 'someone somewhat different ever since,' and after spending time with these poems you might well notice the same thing about yourself. You might be surprised to find that you 'feel like champagne, like prayer'.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eEllie Schoenfeld\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Sutter's poems, simultaneously conversational and lyrical, call attention not to himself but rather to his subjects, the people and places of Minnesota's North Country and also of Sweden, Ireland, Spain, and elsewhere. The book is the perfect antidote to any number of pandemics that human beings are prone to, including self-pity, envy, anger, sorrow, and despair. His poems are chock-full of affirmation, joy, laughter, singing, and a deep love of people and the natural world.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eDavid Jauss\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Nodin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42114542928022,"sku":"9781947237483","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/products\/9781947237483ita.jpg?v=1663017654"},{"product_id":"cotton-grass","title":"Cotton Grass","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe natural world has been a major source of inspiration for Bart Sutter's poetry for more than half a century, during which he has explored the backroads, trails, rivers, lakes, and bogs of the North, returning with vivid reports of otters eating golden walleyes, a big bull moose groaning for love, and the memorable music of a field full of bobolinks.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCotton Grass\u003c\/em\u003e also bears witness to the allure of nature in urban settings. Sutter has drawn beauty and insight from the woodsy environs of his home overlooking Lake Superior: a fox appears at a summer big-band concert; a raccoon relaxes in the hole he's ripped through a roof, gazing round \"like a soldier from the turret of a tank\"; a pair of lovers find an emblem for their daring as they watch a falcon fold its wings and hurtle headlong toward the pavement.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis retrospective collection reveals that, all along, Bart Sutter has resisted contemporary trends and gone his own way, listening for what each poem wanted to be, mastering a remarkable range of tones and forms from celebration to lamentation, from long-lined free verse to haiku, from love lyrics to prophecy, from ballad to sonnet, from story to song.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn called this poetry \"light years away (thank God) from post-modern tactics; one might even say Sutter's aesthetic is pre-modern. There are many poems with rhyme and meter, an unabashed celebration of nature, and most amazingly, a healthy sampling of what we see little of these days, the affirmative poem.\"\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBart Sutter\u003c\/strong\u003e received the Minnesota Book Award for poetry with \u003cem\u003eThe Book of Names: New and Selected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e , for fiction with \u003cem\u003eMy Father's War and Other Stories\u003c\/em\u003e, and for creative non-fiction with \u003cem\u003eCold Comfort: Life at the Top of the Map\u003c\/em\u003e. Among other honors, he has won a Jerome Foundation Travel \u0026amp; Study Grant (Sweden), a Loft-McKnight Award, and the Bassine Citation from the Academy of American Poets. In 2006, he was named the first Poet Laureate of Duluth. He has written for public radio, he has had four verse plays produced, and he often performs as one half of The Sutter Brothers, a poetry-and-music duo. Bart Sutter lives on a hillside overlooking Lake Superior with his wife, Dorothea Diver.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Bart Sutter's new collection covers nearly fifty years of Sutter's poetic engagement with the natural world, the North Country, his Swedish heritage, and the characters—human, animal, floral—inhabiting his homeland. The word that comes to mind with Bart Sutter's poems is exuberant. These poems find energy, reflection, and insight in whatever direction the poet turns.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eTim Nolan\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Bart Sutter goes steadily about his work, finding in his home life, in Minnesota's Northwoods, (and in places far beyond) what he needs to create beauty, and from beauty, joy. He shows us how the moments of a closely observed life can turn into magic. Among the earlier poems reprinted in Cotton Grass are some of my very favorites. And the new ones in this volume are as good as those our 'major' poets have produced. Consider Cotton Grass as an assessment, a reckoning of how one remarkable poet has shaped his life and art.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eAnthony Bukoski\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"These poems take risks. They are wise. They restore your faith in the drumbeat of your own heart.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eCarol Connelly\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Bart's poetry is light years away (thank God) from postmodern tactics; one might even say his aesthetic is pre-modern. There are many poems with rhyme and meter, an unabashed celebration of nature, and most amazingly, a healthy sampling of what we see little of these days: the affirmative poem.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eStephen Dunn\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Poetry of great skill, power, and beauty . . . What one starts to understand is that Sutter has both an eye and an ear: the poem's images are selected with telling exactitude, its rhymes are connective but unobtrusive, and its powerful, varied rhythms are controlled with masterful finesse and precision.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eRichard Simpson\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Barton Sutter is so thoroughly a Minnesota Scandinavian—with the usual streak of curmudgeonly pessimism—that he becomes something larger, a type of American artist and culture maker, an emblem of us at our best.\" - \u003cstrong\u003eBill Holm\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Nodin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48357849858365,"sku":"9781947237575","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0477\/8731\/1254\/files\/9781947237575ita.jpg?v=1712862515"}],"url":"https:\/\/itascabooks.com\/collections\/bart-sutter.oembed","provider":"Itasca Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}