Warren Woesser

There are basically three kinds of poets. There’s that guy at the coffee shop who’s in need of a personal hygiene care package from the International Library of Poetry. There’s that tortured woman in Iowa who’s won so many big-buck fellowships and grants that her very existence tortures fellow poets everywhere. And then there’s the practical poet, the bard who decides to get a decent day job and write a little on the side. Like the good doctor William Carlos Williams, local poet-lawyer Warren Woessner took the road less disheveled, writing his poetry after the bills got paid. Which isn’t to say he isn’t devoted to his art; in addition to publishing thirteen books, he co-founded the poetry journal Abraxas in 1968 (it’s still going strong) and hosted a poetry radio show (it’s not). His new book, Our Hawk, resurrects the Toothpaste Press imprint of Coffeehouse Press, and features a gorgeous handmade paper cover. The poems inside have their own beauty as well. Woessner, a devoted bird nerd, writes about a hawk summering in the city, as well as nerve-damaged fishermen, a comet in the southwestern sky, and a page from a law book, fluttering amid the rubble at Ground Zero. Sometimes that office job bleeds over a little. 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-4611; www.magersandquinn.com