Remembering Dorothy Day
2014
Dorothy Day and I go way back. Granted, I never met her, but I can’t help but feel a connection after volunteering every third Saturday for the past twenty years at the Dorothy Day Center in downtown Saint Paul. I first went there on a lark, something to try once because I had just moved to the Twin Cities and wanted to meet new people. I never got around to stopping.
Untitled
2014
It’s spring! DerFrühling! Printemps! Ring bells! Play the sackbut and shawm! Excel. Rise and shine...
This Week in Saint Paul: Monday, April 14–Sunday, April 20, 2014
2014
Welcome to single-sort, curbside recycling, Saint Paul! We are following the simplest of recycling adages: keep it simple and people will use it. If I can fit all of my recycling into one bag, will I have room for more art in another? Saint Paul is reducing, reusing, and recycling. I hope this affords us more creative spaces and the time to fill them with talent. I've listed a few examples here.
April 23, 2014: Robert Karimi presents “Poetry about Food & Sex” at the Lowertown Reading Jam
2014
Celebrate National Poetry Month with a group of some of the most fabulous Twin Cities poets/activists/storytellers who will set the table with nourishing delicious poems that will leave you hungry for more. From radical love, to feeding the masses, to Burger King sex, to wannabe porn starification, these sexy poets have run the gamut in their perspectives on the subject. And, yes, don't worry, we'll make time to talk about microaggressions...because our performers are far from being one-dimensional! Special aphrodisiac surprises on the Black Dog Café menu, concocted by The Peoples Cook, to get you in the mood before and after.
April 17, 2014 – Soul Sounds Open Mic’s National Poetry Month Celebration
2014
Tonight we honor the reason we are in the room! April is National Poetry Month and, tonight, we honor the poets. Bring your favorite poem or poem number seventeen in your 30/30 series or just listen as we fill the space with new, old, polished, and imperfectly perfect poems from 6 p.m.-8 p.m. It is going to be great!
My Name Is Hmoob: Call Me Freedom
2014
My name is not “Exotic . . .” My name is Freedom My people are worth more than eye candy and shallow praise, My people have no home, no country We are from stolen territory...
April 10, 2014 – Soul Sounds Open Mic featuring the Be Heard MN Youth Slam Team
2014
From January to March 2014, over one hundred young Minnesotans were deeply engaged in the Be Heard MN Youth Poetry Slam Series, a program of TruArtSpeaks. The slam identifies six young people to represent the State of Minnesota in the international Brave New Voices Youth Poetry Slam Festival. Tonight, Soul Sounds Open Mic will host a few of the team members and engage with them about their experience as youth poets throughout the process, while also listening to and experiencing their art.
This Week in Saint Paul: Monday, April 7–Sunday, April 13, 2014
2014
I woke up Friday morning to a white blanket of humility. I had watched it begin to fall the previous afternoon as I sat in on one of the many events listed in the Almanac arts calendar. We looked out the window of the third-floor room of the Metropolitan State library to see heavy flakes against the backdrop of our downtown skyline and both of the capital city’s domes. I know last week, I hinted that we might be past all of this. I was wrong, but at the same time here I was in a room full of people happy not to be stuck in front of the television at home.
What Saint Paul Owes to Whiskey
2014
During an 1883 visit to Saint Paul, the great Mark Twain observed: “How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary—but always whiskey! Such is the case.”
April 3, 2014 – Soul Sounds Open Mic featuring Mark K. Tilsen with Writing Workshop
2014
Mark Kenneth Tilsen is a Jewish Oglala Lakota poet and philosopher born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He currently is studying at Hamline University and trying to find a way back home after graduation. A sometimes activist, he can be found scribbling in his notebook at Kopplin's coffee house when hiding from irate professors.
City Trees, Coffee Shop, Spring
2014
Some days trees are all I see. Today they’re getting fringed in leaves at the crown. Underneath there’s a huge ball of root that nobody sees except my son...
This Week in Saint Paul: Monday, March 31–Sunday, April 6, 2014
2014
Okay. No kvetching! You can park on both sides of the street now. The snow will be with us for a while, but the air feels a lot better, light enough for us to seemingly glide down sidewalks without having to brace ourselves from the previous months’ harsh elements. They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Here, that image rings as thinly as that story about the groundhog. I can't think of a good animal to reference in an allegory fitting to this Minnesota winter, but it does not matter. It's nicer out. Let's greet it with art in our 20th edition of This Week in Saint Paul!