MPR’s Catherine Winter interviews Duluth poet Barton Sutter about his style of poetry and writing process. Segment includes Sutter reading from one of his books.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) Martin will be honored tonight at the Hamline Library. So we asked him to stop by our Studios first to talk a bit about his work. Thanks for coming in

(00:00:07) your welcomes fun to come down here at a beautiful drive pink sunrise over the valley of the st. Louis River frost on the trees lovely

(00:00:16) Drive. Did you get to see Venus blazing away in

(00:00:18) the I wouldn't I wouldn't know how to

(00:00:20) fry something in the sky pretty magical this morning the one good thing about getting up early to do this program. Tell me a little bit about I know that you grew up in a lot of small towns. He's in the Midwest and that you're currently live in Duluth. And I wonder whether you consider yourself a rural writer if that's fair idea is your work consciously rural or are you simply reflecting the life you're living?

(00:00:44) Well, that's it. It began coming out of the the life. I was living and I suppose that really I began as a nature poet and that's still a strain in my writing and I was writing about especially about people that I knew while I was growing up. They still many of them Loom like giants for me and my mind and and so, you know, I was working with the material that I had as I've gone on I I moved to the Twin Cities. I lived in Boston for a while and I tried to incorporate more urban material. But now I've moved a new move to Duluth seven years ago. I'm right on the edge of the woods bears come to town to visit. So I feel pretty rural. I mean I'm living in a city but it must be about as we're all as steady as you can find in the country. I think

(00:01:37) what made you choose Duluth to live in?

(00:01:39) Yeah. That's a question. Well, I had maternal grandparents there. There and moved around as a PK. That's a preacher's

(00:01:48) kid. I was going to ask

(00:01:51) around a lot. So Duluth felt as much like a HomeTown I suppose as any place and it had fixed itself in my mind fairly early on as a really magical place that huge Lake, you know, and on the edge of the woods and all that black rock there. I guess. It's a Basalt. I remember as a little kid pleading for For my parents to take my picture on those rocks and countries wild. You know, I love

(00:02:20) that I suppose it's a good compromise City for someone who has both urban and rural

(00:02:24) yearnings. I think so and just about the right size

(00:02:27) for me on the jacket of your book. I noticed that your poetry was referred to as muscular. I bet you didn't make that up or

(00:02:37) did I didn't

(00:02:38) know that what do you make of that is your is your poetry on purpose muscular or or is it on Purpose mail in some way.

(00:02:47) I don't know how conscious that is. I'll tell you what, I'll tell you something that did happen was my poems kept bringing up for me powerful women that I had known as a kid. I noticed that all these all these are sort of Earth Mother types and at some point I stopped and asked myself. Why is this? You know, why? Is this pattern recurring and then I began to make conscious effort to include more men more male figures. That's the odd thing. Is that when I went to writing fiction. There weren't women there were all these old men that started coming up in the story. So it's very strange thing and I can't really explain

(00:03:35) it. I was struck by one of your poems about a man. I believe it's called The Snowman, is that correct? That's no man. Would you be willing to read that for

(00:03:43) sure what you know, we haven't had the huge blizzards this year, but nature is the right time of year. I stays tell me that the Farmers Almanac says we're going to get all our snow at the at the end of the winter.

(00:03:56) Well, we skiers hope so.

(00:04:00) This is a poem for Tom. This is a poem for Tom Blair. This is a poem for him and for all of the men on the edge of their beds in their underwear. Wondering what they're doing there. This is a poem for them for all of the good providers. The place of the poem is Chicago. The time of the poem is the great snow of 1979 in 79. It snowed so that people fought over parking spots arms were Twisted headlights. I stood and all because of the snow. Not that I blame the snow know the snow was only the whether I'm talking about something else altogether. Thomas Blair drove a plow and because of the snow and 79 he worked a lot of overtime. Not that I blame the snow but because of the snow the work was there and there was the wife and kid a regular blizzard of debts. And so the food of the poem is coffee coffee and cigarettes Tom went to work and he worked and worked with little time off and he worked and worked in one day Tom. He went berserk. He forgot all about the snow and started plowing up cars and some had people in them and some of the people died. Can you see the blue lights of his truck the Cherry tops of the cops. He wrecked 40 cars with the plow before they got him stopped and when they could hear what the screaming said, you know what the screaming said. I hate my job. I want to see my kid. I hate my goddamn

(00:05:34) job.

(00:05:37) So that's it. That's the poem. What do you think? What do you think it's all about? It's not about the snow so much as I'll tell you what it's about. This is a poem for Tom. This is a poem for Tom Blair. This is a poem for him. And for all of the men on the edge of their beds in their underwear. Wondering what they're doing there. This is a poem for them for all of the good

(00:06:06) providers. Right, right or Barton Sutter reading from the book of names. Is that a true story Barton? Was there a man named Tom

(00:06:14) Blair? There was a man named Tom Blair. I this is something that I picked up out of a newspaper and Anarchist newspaper. Oh really? Obviously some years ago. Now one of the things that amuses me is that I took her I took a kind of a chance, you know, writing that poem talking about 79 like the Snows of 79 when it was 1979 so it seemed Goofy at the time but now with each year added on to that poem it starts to sound like the old days but yes, there was such a man in Chicago and I was working a job that I was real frustrated with at the time. So it triggered something in me and it wasn't at all hard to sympathize with this man.

(00:06:57) I know him. I know a lot of poets who are comfortable writing but not comfortable reading their work. And I know you're planning to read this evening and you obviously are comfortable doing it and your poems gained a whole new whole new element from hearing them in your voice. How does it happen that how does it happen that you can read aloud as well as right.

(00:07:18) Well, I had people reading aloud to me from the time. I was age zero, you know, and with my father is a minister. Used to that voice coming out of the pulpit and I was used to that oral tradition a little bit as being magical. I think so II took that in early on my grandmother was a great Storyteller. I did competitive speech in high school and it just it's real important to me. It's getting the poem across in. In a way that you can't and and on the page and and and another thing is it's just lovely to make contact with people, you know, writing is such a job for dirty little introvert. It's great to get out and make that connection with people

(00:08:07) when you write do you speak the lines as you write or do you consciously right in an attempt to write something that can be spoken? Well,

(00:08:14) well often one hears voices in in one's head. I To begin with sometimes it's just a little whisper or Mumble. But yeah long before I'm done with the poem. I'm saying things out loud and Donald Hall wonderful figure in American literature who's got cancer bad and probably going to die before long, but he was saying I remember him saying recently that if you read it aloud and it gets better. It's literature. So wonderful,

(00:08:49) that is Is do you get something back when you do events, like the one you're doing this evening at the Hamline branch of the Saint Paul Public Library from the public. Does that contribute somehow to your ability to write later or do you find new things in the in the Poetry that you didn't know we're there.

(00:09:03) Well, it's an encouragement for one thing to see that the stuff actually can reach people. So that's big help, you know some encouragement and another thing that happens if there are places in the work where you stumble where you stick. Where you see people yawning and looking in the corners then you say well, I'm going to change something there. So that's that's that's some help but mostly it's the matter of you know, making the human contact seeing that the artworks

(00:09:36) you brought along a poem a love poem. Is it brief enough that you could read it in the last 30 seconds of our broadcast. Oh, yeah.

(00:09:43) Okay, I think that'll go here. It is for coming up on Valentine's Day. I I love sleep. I love night and I love sleeping with the one I love and so I want to read this thing called. It's about night called the one thing God got

(00:10:00) right.

(00:10:03) I'm glad I get to sleep with you. I like the little noises we make in the night murmurs and grunts hiccups. As we dream unconscious coughing fits size of delight. I adore the warmth and smooth of our sleep and I love to wake up knowing nothing except you smell like bread and Dawn is still a long way off every day. I get depressed by the lousy design around here War appendicitis suicide for Christ's sake. God must have been drunk when he drew up this mess. But then the edge of evening sweeps across the Earth soft as the shadow of a great gray owl and people by the millions decide to lie down all across the continent. We drop like dominoes night is the one thing God got right.