rakemag “Wigger” is just another stereotype put upon a certain group of people to criticize who they are [“Has Your Shizzle Gone Fazizzle?,” January]. Ethnicity doesn’t greatly affect personality. It is mostly a person’s environment that influences their behavior. One should feel free to be him or herself without worrying if they are acting like everyone … Read more
As both a feminist and a longtime admirer of Robert Bly’s work, I find myself wanting to respond to your excellent, in-depth article [“The Dude Abides,” January]. Not so long ago I ran into one of Bly’s “woodsy drummers,” who expressed amazement that I didn’t find anything wrong with what he was doing. Unless Bly … Read more
I grew up in Madison, Minnesota. My school bus downshifted on the gravel road right in front of Robert Bly’s familial home every day for nearly twelve years. That area is my home and my people. I know them and I miss them. And far from what you imagine, they have plenty of “intellectual musings.” … Read more
About the book Bly published of Neruda translations in the mid-sixties, author Jon Zurn quotes Bly as saying “I think that was the first time he’d been published in the U.S.” That’s not so. The first Neruda poems in English that were published in a book in the U.S. seem to have been in Three … Read more
I will share Clinton Collins’ outrage over the alleged disproportionate amount of coverage given to the Dru Sjodin abduction if he can provide the name of a young female university student of color who was abducted from the parking lot of her part-time employer in Minnesota/North Dakota. Does the fact that I can’t think of … Read more
I read with gratitude Joe Pastoor’s recent article “All Shook Down: Is ASCAP kneecapping your corner coffee shop?”[November]. As one of those interviewed for the article, I offer these observations. BMI spokesman Jerry Bailey is not correct when he says that “if a business owner is not playing BMI music, he/she has nothing to worry … Read more
North Carolina writer Kimmel’s third book, Something Rising (Light and Swift), isn’t quite strong enough to justify that optimistic title. But there’s merit in the story of Cassie Claiborne, an emotionally wounded girl from poor rural Indiana whose preternatural talent for shooting pool might be her ticket out of town, or at least toward reconciliation … Read more
Katherine Lanpher has moved on from MPR, but before she left she helped broaden the vistas of the Talking Volumes radio book club by getting Neil Gaiman, who perhaps may not draw the same crowd as Anna Quindlen. Gaiman, who will discuss his recent kid-lit creeper Coraline, is best known for creating the nineties graphic-novel … Read more
After chronicling the life of Renaissance artist Artemisia Gentileschi in her last book, Susan Vreeland continues her welcome biographical specialty in underappreciated women artists in her new novel, Forest Lover. This time around, her subject is turn-of-the-century painter Emily Carr, who defied her strict Victorian family to live among the Indians of then-isolated Vancouver Island. … Read more
You’ve heard of China’s last emperor, the boy king toppled from the throne by the rise of Mao. Now, meet his mother, the last empress. Becoming Madame Mao and Red Azalea author Min returns with another wonderfully descriptive work, the first in an eventual trilogy about Tzu Hsi, China’s longest-reigning female ruler. Min aims to … Read more