Readers and writers: A treasured local poet launches her latest collection
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When Deborah Keenan reads from her new poetry collection Saturday at Hamline University, the Klas Center is sure to be filled with her writing students past and present, fellow poets and friends to listen to Keenan read in her mesmerizing voice from “The Saint of Everything.”
Saints hover over many of the poems in Keenan’s 11th book: The Saint of Abandoned Nurseries, the Saint of Maps, the Saints of Common Murders and of Childhood. Her publisher, Lynx House Press, describes this collection as “poems of deep sentiment, and certain collisions of memory and imagination, poems that respect melancholy, and poems that deepen our understanding of betrayal and tenderness. (It is) about decades of thinking, feeling, considering what living might really mean and what a person does or doesn’t do to protect one’s spirit, one’s soul.”
There are tough poems here, too, including one in which a couple finds a dead child in a tree, and joyous ones in which she writes about animals. She honors simple things, flowers on the prairie and her son’s love of dappled light in the forest.
Keenan, who grew up in Bloomington, is one of the most respected poets, teachers and mentors around. Just ask her friend and former colleague Mary Rockcastle, who praises “The Saint of Everything.”
“This book is wonderful. It is Deborah at the top of her game and represents who she is as a poet and human being,” said Rockcastle, director of the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Hamline. “Lynx House sold out of her first printing very quickly, a scenario they found exhilarating and very rare. They have since gone into a second printing.”
When Keenan retired in 2017 after 30 years teaching in Hamline’s creative writing programs, one student admitted she and her friends called Keenan “Mother Goddess of teaching and art in general.” Keenan won the creative writing program’s outstanding faculty award so many times that the administration finally suggested other people should be honored.
In a pre-retirement interview with the Pioneer Press, Keenan explained how she shared her philosophy of poetry with her students. urging them to “get to the spirit, the narrative energy that has to be present. You are always searching to tell the emotional truth of what led you to the thought in the first place. Every choice you made has to be thought about … Don’t be a liar to yourself. It has to be more than OK. Something has driven you to write this … what you say matters. Let’s figure out a way to do it.”
Keenan, who is also a prominent visual artist specializing in collages, graduated from Macalester College and ran the COMPAS writers and poets in the schools program. After serving as managing editor for literary publisher Milkweed Editions, she found her teaching home at Hamline. Outside the classroom she founded the Laurel Poetry Collective with 22 other working poets and artists. She also teaches private classes.
Keenan will host her book’s official launch at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 23, at Hamline University, 1536 Hewitt Ave., St. Paul. It’s free, and she promises there will be cake.
Who Are the Animals With You in Times of Jubilation?
“Cats, kittens, lions and tigers,
brown horses, palominos,
and the oldest circus horse in America.
One dog, who represents all the dogs
loved by people I love,
who represents the one dog I loved.
Are birds animals? I never remember.
If they are, then cardinals, gold finches,
blackbirds, crows, rooks, and ravens.
If they are, then egrets, cranes,
and beloved pelicans with their treasure
box bodies.
These are the animals I want with me
in my time of jubilation. This is my answer
to the question I asked one winter night
in one of my classes, which I don’t remember
any of my students answering.”
(from “The Saint of Everything”)
“No Way to Die”: For thriller readers, Christopher Valen’s ninth book featuring St. Paul homicide Det. John Santana (Santa Rita Press, $17), which will also launch Saturday.
“That’s how you make this work,’ Santana said. “Think about the loved ones left behind. Work every case like the victim is the most important person in your life. Never make someone feel victimized twice by your demeanor or lack of attention. They’re already hurting and looking for answers or closure. We shouldn’t be making it worse for them. Everyone deserves the same level of service and respect going in.”
That’s Colombia-born John Santana telling his new partner, Gabriel Cruz, about how to approach families of victims with dignity. It’s a good indication of Santana’s lack of cynicism about his job and his compassion that isn’t always visible.
Valen’s Santana series is set in the Twin Cities and this one has special local flavor because it begins when human remains are found in Como Park during the Pioneer Press medallion hunt during the St. Paul Winter Carnival. The kid who found the bones has a juvie record and is a suspect, especially when he later finds a skull. Then, the partners investigate the death of a veteran who served in Afghanistan and apparently killed himself in the bathtub. The detectives are suspicious of that scenario, especially when they find a photo taken in Afghanistan showing the woman, three white men and an unidentified Afghan. When two of the men in the picture are killed, and the third is shot at, Santana believes the mysterious Afghan is behind the deaths and is loose in the city.
Meanwhile, Santana is taking heat from his bosses because he isn’t spending time on solving the mystery of the dug-up bones. The department’s big shots are getting pressure from the carnival and local businesses because everyone is searching for human remains instead of looking for the Pioneer Press medallion.
What is behind the killings? Money stolen during war from the U.S. government? Drugs? Everything leads back to Afghanistan.
Gradually, Santana and Cruz, who is willing to learn from his older partner, put the cases together. Both men are fighting personal demons. Cruz has PTSD suffered in military service and Santana has not come to terms with killing the man who killed his mother.
As the partners investigate, they learn a lot about what goes on in U.S. military bases in Afghanistan, including top secret “ghost” units and help for a unit made up of brave Afghani women willing to die to fight the Taliban.
There are a few caveats here. Valen spends a lot of time telling us how people are dressed, even secondary characters. And sometimes he wanders into scenes that seem to go nowhere, such as when he visits a University of Minnesota professor to check out a clue regarding British poet William Blake. But his clear depiction of Santana, the story’s twists and turns, and the Twin Cities settings more than make up for this.
Valen will sign copies of his book from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 23, at Once Upon a Crime, 604 W. 26th St., Mpls.
