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DAN CROCKER: For long time. Duluth resident and poet Deb Cooper, Lake Superior is like a kind of magnetic force. She says. She can't imagine living anywhere else.

DEB COOPER: Every time I travel away from Lake Superior, I feel like I'm sort of going against my own gravity, and there's always that pull to come back here. And I think it has that power over a lot of people.

DAN CROCKER: Cooper helped edit the new anthology called Amethyst and Agate, Poems of Lake Superior. We're sitting on smooth rocks on a bright, sunny day at Brighton Beach outside Duluth, where her family used to stop for picnics on the way to a cabin in Canada. She says the book 70 poems capture the lake's many personalities.

DEB COOPER: One of the things about this lake that is so wonderful and rich are the different moods, and we all have all of those different moods and the emotions within us, so that's part of the connection, I think. We all feel anger and rage. We all feel peaceful and serene.

DAN CROCKER: So what's her mood today? What would you say?

DEB COOPER: Oh, she's kicking back. She's just kicking back.

DAN CROCKER: Gary Boelhower's poem "After Sailing" captures the lake on one of those gentler days.

GARY BOELHOWER: After sailing all day through the diamonds and silk of Superior,

The rhythm of the waves still in my body,

I dream the wind sings in my bones,

Hollow flutes for a symphony of luster,

And I am nothing.

DAN CROCKER: Boelhower is a theology professor at the College of Saint Scholastica. He comes early to the lake's shores to watch the sun rise.

GARY BOELHOWER: Well, one of the things that this lake has taught me is how absolutely small I am, and how large is the mystery, how expansive is the world, and I play a little tiny, itty bitty part in it, and yet it's important.

DAN CROCKER: Amethyst and Agate is the latest of more than 125 books published by Holy Cow Press. Jim Pearlman has run the independent publisher for 38 years from a home office, now filled with stacks of old manuscripts and ancient computer equipment.

JIM PEARLMAN: I don't know of many other presses that would take on a project of publishing poetry about Lake Superior. Perhaps it's because of my location and because of my interest in publishing poetry books that it just kind of all came together,

DAN CROCKER: Pearlman says. This is the first poetry anthology published about Lake Superior that he's aware of. For the project, he received 300 entries from 140 different poets.

JIM PEARLMAN: The poems are magical, mysterious, and also reveal the mayhem that Lake Superior can be.

DAN CROCKER: Some expressed concern for environmental issues and focus on keeping the lake clean and vital. Others are about the economy the lake supports, from shipping to mining to fishing. Many explore childhood memories. What they share is an intimate connection to the great lake. For singer-songwriter Sarah Thompson, that connection goes both ways. The lyrics for her song "Lake Superior, A Love Song from the Lake" are included as a poem in the anthology. She says it celebrates living through the seasons next to Lake Superior.

SARAH THOMPSON: And the other thing that it was was a love song to us from the lake.

DAN CROCKER: So it was more it was more that than you singing a love song to the lake.

SARAH THOMPSON: Right. It wasn't me singing to the lake. The chorus is, the water will whisper a love song in your ear, so it's Lake Superior singing a love song to us. So that was the idea. Should I sing it?

(SINGING) So the water will whisper

A love song in your ear

Come near

I will always be here

DAN CROCKER: Thompson will be performing along with around 30 of the poets featured in the new anthology on Sunday afternoon at 3:00 at the Zeitgeist Arts Cafe in Duluth. Dan Crocker, Minnesota Public Radio news, Duluth.

SARAH THOMPSON: (SINGING) And the water will whisper

A love song in your ear

Come near

I will always be here