Author: Max Ross

  • Sometimes All the Time

    Jonah’s throat was sore, lately. It hadn’t bothered him in the last couple days, but Jonah still waited for the pain to resurface, so that whenever he swallowed it would feel like swallowing sand, like it had for the past month or so. This waiting made him impatient, but the painkillers he took somewhat tempered…

  • A New Lorax Is Needed

    In the corner of St. Croix Antiquarian Booksellers, over by the color-coded antique maps, is a framed edict that’s actually more of a poem: "I, Richard BoothKing of HayLord of all booktowns& their protector in perpetuityhereby declare thatStillwater MinnesotaIs the first booktownIn the western hemisphere.Let no one gainsayOr dare to disputeThis is my official decree."…

  • Words like Bombs

    The introduction to this week’s Poem Worth Reading is taken from Bart Schneider’s forthcoming novel, the highly Minneapolized The Man in the Blizzard: "Sometimes I wonder why Americans are as afraid of poetry as they are of al-Qaeda. Screw the ones who’ve decided that poetry’s an effete enterprise. Let ‘em party with the homophobes. It’s…

  • Warlocks Cover the Turf

    The music filled the room. Emanating from a trio of guitars, chords resonated with chords and dispersed throughout the Turf Club on Wednesday night, thick and palpable as the fog that periodically came out from the fog machines. Steady percussion from bass and drums crept under the noise to make it danceable (or at least…

  • Borges on Bloom

    The introduction to this week’s Poem Worth Reading is taken from Bart Schneider’s forthcoming novel, the highly Minneapolized The Man in the Blizzard: "Sometimes I wonder why Americans are as afraid of poetry as they are of al-Qaeda. Screw the ones who’ve decided that poetry’s an effete enterprise. Let ‘em party with the homophobes. It’s…

  • Happy (Belated) Bloomsday!

    Last night, The University Club of St. Paul hosted their annual Bloomsday celebration, honoring James Joyce’s Ulysses, a novel whose action takes place on June 16, 1904. A group of eighty or so people, primarily sexagenarian (by one superficial participant’s observations), gathered in a well-lit room. Aside from a fairly amazing reading of Molly’s soliloquy…