The Master Butchers Singing Club (Revisited)

The Master Butcher (Louis Erdrich) – 255/365, BlackBerry 365, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2010, photo © 2010 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

To celebrate the World Premiere stage adaptation of The Master Butchers Singing Club at the Guthrie, Liz and I have started reading the novel aloud to each other. I savor each moment. This will be second time I have followed Fidelis from Germany with his pristine set of knives and suitcase full of sausages, walked the streets of Argus, North Dakota with Delphine and Cyprian, and sat at the clean and ordered table of Eva Waldvogel.

The first time was at least five years ago when my relationship with Liz was just getting started. We quickly discovered that we both loved art, music, writers, and books — lots of books. Liz grew up in North Dakota and Louise Erdrich was one of her favorite authors (she had gone to see her speak in the 80’s at Moorhead State). To help win me over, and in a courtship ritual I didn’t find the least bit bizarre, she checked out two library copies of The Master Butchers Singing Club on CD, handed one to me and said, “I thought we could listen to them separately in our cars and compare notes. What do you think?”

Seven years and some odd months later….we learned that Master Butchers was coming to the Guthrie and vowed to pick up tickets. A few weeks ago when we attended The Scottsboro Boys, we stopped by the ticket window and sealed the deal. Then Birchbark Books (the independent bookstore owned by Louise) announced on Facebook that it had a few signed, First Edition copies of The Masters Butchers Singing Club for sale. I returned home that evening to find the book gleaming off the coffee table. And there on the cover, in a photograph taken June 8th, 1912, in Pforzheim, Germany, was the Master Butcher himself, Louise’s grandfather, Louis Erdrich.

Can you imagine having your novel adapted for the stage in such a prestigious venue as the Guthrie Theater? If the Guthrie’s photograph of Louise and her daughter on set before the preview opening on September 11th is any indication, it is a feeling of elation and pure joy.

We’ll be attending the play in October (with several friends) and will come back and check in later this Fall. According to Minnesota Monthly, director Francesca Zambello didn’t know Louise when she frequented Kenwood Café and picked up a copy of Master Butchers at Birchbark next store. But over time, “With Erdrich’s blessing (and advice), Zambello and Pulitzer-winning playwright Marsha Norman began condensing the sprawling family saga, set in the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota, between the world wars. There’s more singing and less butchering now. And that’s fine with Erdrich…”

In my humble opinion, The Master Butchers Singing Club is one of her finest. I can only imagine that Louise’s grandfather would agree. It is a book about the importance of place and culture, a universal story. There is a way that Louise’s books honor those who came before her, generations of ancestry in perfect imperfection. As above, so below. So may it be.

The Erdrich Sisters, Heid, Lise, Louise, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2008, photo © 2008-2010 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Additional Resources:

MPR Midmorning: From the page to the stage – The Master Butchers Singing Club. Kerri Miller’s interview this morning with Louise Erdrich and Francesca Zambello.

Minnesota Monthly Profiles Author Louise Erdrich, September 2010 – Staging Erdrich by Michael Tortorello including 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Louise.

Play Guide, Interviews, and Ticket Info on The Master Butchers Singing Club at the Guthrie Theater.

Louise’s bookstore, Birchbark Books where you can get your own First edition, first printing, hardcover of The Master Butchers Singing Club signed by Louise Erdrich, or the newly re-issued Fishing for Myth from Heid Erdrich.

Bill Moyers interview with Louise Erdrich on Bill Moyers Journal, April 9th, 2010

Louise Erdrich on Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates Jr.

-related to posts: The Company Of Strangers (On Louise Erdrich & Flying), Book Talk — Do You Let Yourself Read?

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Desire And A Library Card — The Only Tools Necessary To Start A Poetry Group

By Teri Blair

Five months ago I started a poetry and meditation group in my home. And I’ll tell you straight up: if I can start a poetry group, anyone can start a poetry group.

I am not well read when it comes to poets. Before doing this, if called upon to name poets I would have only been able to tick off the most obvious choices: Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson. For most of my life I’ve felt intimidated by poetry. When I’d hear a poem read, I’d usually feel like I didn’t get it. I considered the door to poetry locked and bolted, entered by only a heady few.

But at the beginning of 2008, I began to get an itch to do something to make the world a better place. I know, I know, such a cliché. But I was tired of feeling depressed by the sort of people and events that grab headlines. I was frustrated, feeling like my country was being taken over by things I didn’t like or believe in. I was worried that people weren’t reading like they used to. I wanted to do something to steer the world in the direction I wanted it to go.

The idea for the group dawned on me one day, and I recognized it immediately as something I could pull off. I could invite people over to my house; we’d sit together for an hour, hear good poetry, and be still. And that’s pretty much what we do. It’s not a complicated event.

Each month I pick out a poet. To do this, I browse in a bookstore or library, or go to an online poetry site. I like choosing poets from around the country and from varied backgrounds, but for the first meeting of the group, I picked a Nebraskan poet, just so we could get used to hearing poetry from a Midwestern voice. Since then, we’ve been to Massachusetts, North Carolina, California, and Virginia.

I select poets whose words and voices are accessible. I live in a city with a sensational library system, so I get all the poet’s books with my public library card. I sit on my living room floor with books scattered around me, and slowly page through them. Certain poems jump out at me, and these are the ones I put a bookmark next to.

The people in my poetry group have the option of helping me read, so I email them poems I’ve selected. This gives them the chance to practice reading the poems out loud before we meet. I do a little research on the poets so I can share a bit about their lives and what brought them to writing. I keep this short. I don’t think anyone wants an endless historic lecture.

When we gather, I have candles lit. We get quiet, and I tell everyone what I’ve learned about the poet whose work we’ll hear. I don’t memorize this; I have it written on a piece of paper. I play a song to begin to slow us down, and then we listen to poetry. About one poem every five minutes with silence in-between. Sometimes I can find sound recordings at the library of the authors reading their own works. So at the end, we’ll listen to the writer reading a few of his or her own poems.

So far, our poets have all been living. So we sign a card thanking them and telling them the titles of the poems we heard. I find mailing addresses online and mail the card the next day. Then we drink tea, eat snacks (I ask for a volunteer to bring treats), and hang around. That’s it.

This is what I know so far:

1. I feel a lot better adding something of decency and substance to the world.
2. I am getting to know poets, and I am thrilled. If you say the name Maya Angelou to me, I’m tracking with you. If Rita Dove comes to town to read, I’ll be all over her work.
3. Everyone who comes knows that for at least one hour every month they will get to be still in a busy world.
4. After the Mary Oliver night, a 26-year-old from our group went and bought all her books. Three people purchased tickets to hear her speak when she came to Minneapolis last March. I’m pretty sure these things wouldn’t have happened if not for the exposure to her work.
5. We got to participate in National Poem in Your Pocket Day in April. We wouldn’t have known about it had I not been searching poetry websites.
6. Ted Kooser wrote to our group. I’m here to say I have a postcard from a two-time Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner hanging on my bulletin board. Not bad.
7. The people who come range in age from 26-55. It feels healthy to be in a cross-age group.
8. Hosting these evenings is part of my writing practice. It is a tangible way to move my life in the direction I want it to go.
9. The people who come seem genuinely happy to participate. Someone told me this morning that it feeds her soul.
10. On Gary Soto night, a young group member (a Spanish major) read her poem twice, first in Spanish and then in English. It was deeply touching to hear another language spoken; it brought tears to our eyes. I don’t know why it did, but it was good. Gary sent us a postcard, too. Part of it is written in Spanish. That Gary.
11. After deciding that July would feature the poetry of Louise Erdrich, my friend and I saw her a few rows back on the same airplane when we were returning from a writing retreat. It was almost too much synchronicity to grasp. The sort of serendipity that makes your head feel dizzy and your stomach full of butterflies.
12. When Robert Bly was named Minnesota’s first Poet Laureate, we swelled with pride. Poetry mattered to us.

 

All that. And all I had was desire and a library card.

All The Best From Nebraska, postcard (back), March 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

      

Golden Rule, postcard (front), painting by Ted Kooser, 1978, acrylic on canvas, 24″ x 24″, March 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Teri Blair is a freelance writer living in Minneapolis. She is currently writing a profile series on teachers who taught in one-room rural schools before, during, and after WW II. They appear monthly in Senior Perspective.

 

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The Company of Strangers (On Louise Erdrich & Flying)

Somewhere Over Milwaukee, flying home from a writing retreat, May 2008, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

“That looks like Louise Erdrich?” I said, shuffling toward the boarding area of the DC-9 parked on the runway. Northwest Flight 792 out of Milwaukee was about to depart. Three days earlier on our flight from Minneapolis, Teri was stopped in security by a stern, expressionless woman with black, straight hair running down her back.

“What’s going on?” I had asked, sliding my laptop into a slingpack and leaning down to slip on my Lands’ End moccasins. Teri turned to me with a blank look. “It’s the soup,” she said. “The soup?” I laughed.

She had been stopped for carrying a blue ice pack in a small rectangular thermos, housing packages of Minnesota wild rice soup. Bob was bringing ribs from Missouri. We chuckled, wondering if they’d made it through the luggage scan.

“Come with me,” the security guard said to Teri. You need to go back through security.” I blindly followed. One step past the yellow striped police line, I realized my mistake. “Wait, can’t I wait here?” I asked the guard. “Too late,” she said.

I followed Teri, we checked our bags, and looped back through security, twice. Then we sprinted to Gate C3, pausing only long enough to realize we were supposed to be at Gate C7. We were two of the last to board the plane.

By comparison, the Milwaukee check-in had been effortless. No wild rice soup incidents. No blue ice packs filled with dangerous liquids. But Teri did have her backpack searched again. This time it was toothpaste. Finally we were shuffling toward the packed plane bound for Minneapolis.

“Yeah, isn’t that Louise Erdrich?” I asked again.

“What? Where…” Teri said, turning her head in the direction I was staring. “That is Louise Erdrich.”

We played it cool. But could barely contain our excitement. A second before, we had been embroiled in a conversation about writers. And we had talked about Louise among the four of us Saturday night, during a weekend writing retreat at a cabin on Lake Michigan.

Jude mentioned that Louise was coming to Wisconsin to talk about her new book, The Plague of Doves. That spawned a conversation about a night last winter, when Teri, Liz, and I went to see Louise Erdrich and her two sisters, Heid and Lise, at the Minneapolis Central Library. They were appearing together for a local program on writers, Talk of the Stacks.

All three Erdrich sisters are writers. After the Friends of the Library book discussion, we had them sign our books, and Liz took a few photographs, including family shots that she agreed to email to Heid.

That was February. Now it was May — two days earlier, we had talked in casual conversation about our favorite Louise Erdrich books. And just like that, Poof! — she was sitting 15 feet from us at the airport in Milwaukee. Most people did not recognize her.

“Should we say something?” Teri asked.

“Hmmm, I don’t know. Maybe she wants to be anonymous,” I said, throwing another glance toward Louise. She wore frameless glasses, a long brown skirt, and a print blazer. When you run into a well-known writer in public, how do you know the respectful thing to do? Would the writer want you to acknowledge her work, or respect her privacy. What would my published writing friends want. What would I want?

We scanned our boarding passes and headed to our seats. We thought she’d fly First Class. But then, we didn’t even know if she was on the same plane. We were quietly surprised a few minutes later when Louise elegantly walked down the aisle with her leather briefcase. She stopped while a young man in the row across from us almost knocked her over while slinging his carry-on luggage up to the top rack.

After one more look over our shoulders, we buckled our seat belts and settled in. Louise sat down in the opposite aisle, three rows from the back of the plane. It was inspiring be in the company of a famous writer known for her craft. It felt auspicious that she was on the same flight.

“Well, at least if we go down, it will be with one of Minnesota’s most famous writers,” I quipped. “And after a great writing retreat in Wisconsin.” In some twisted way, a moment of spontaneous, dark humor made sense to me. I never board a plane without saying my prayers.

Tired from the weekend, I stared out the window. The curves of Lake Michigan receded into the distance. I thought about Maurine’s funeral pyre on the beach Sunday night. I thought about how the wet sand stuck to my feet the morning I wrote haiku on the beach. I thought about literature, about writing. I thought about Louise Erdrich. She was carrying a CBS bag. Was she on book tour? Had she been in Chicago? New York?

How do you stay grounded, traveling all over the country promoting a new book. I remembered something Ann Patchett said when I saw her speak last year at the Fitzgerald — when you go on book tour, prepare to talk about the last book you wrote. It’s the one people have most likely read.

Teri struck up a conversation with the law student in the seat beside her. He was from Washington, D.C. They exchanged stories throughout the flight. He talked about his travels; she told him about the writing retreat, and that Louise Erdrich was on the same plane. Smiling, I looked down at Lake Michigan and the skyline of Milwaukee.

We rose to cruising altitude, the wings swooped, the plane tipped. We were heading for a bank of clouds with an open slice of light. I quickly unstrapped the Canon from my backpack under the seat, and clicked off a few shots.

The law student dropped his cell phone under his seat. It slid back toward me, resting under my pack. Camera in hand, I pushed it up under Teri’s seat with my right foot. “It’s under your seat now,” I laughed. “Can you reach it?”

She leaned down to pick it up. The glacial lake faded into darkening rain clouds. I focused on the rays of light between them. And wrote a haiku.

                Openings, May 2008, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, all photos © 2008
                by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

at the city’s feet
Lake Michigan from the air
changing perspectives

Post Script:   Teri and I bumped into Louise Erdrich again at the MSP baggage carousel. She was engaged in conversation with a woman she seemed happy to see.  We wanted to mention how much we enjoyed her talk with Heid and Lise. But the timing wasn’t right.

Liz met us at the curb with a big smile on her face. I hugged her, threw my luggage into the backseat, and mentioned that Louise Erdrich was standing at the baggage claim. “Really?” she said, peering through the sliding doors. Teri hopped inside the Saturn and we headed to Hiawatha Joe’s for debriefing and iced tea.

I decided it’s enough to send good thoughts. Though I know her books, Louise Erdrich is a stranger to me. Perhaps the greatest gift was to leave her to a peaceful trip in relative anonymity.

-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

-related to posts: Flying With Strangers & Other Anomalies, Louise Erdrich – No Love for “Fighting Sioux”

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Louise Erdrich – No Love for “Fighting Sioux”

Local breaking news on Minnesota Public Radio is that Louise Erdrich, one of the most well-known writers living in the Twin Cities, rejected an honorary degree from the University of North Dakota because of the school’s continued use of the “Fighting Sioux” sports team name and logo.

It’s a strong statement from a writer, and one that reminds us that symbols have power. Words have power. And so do our choices. Erdrich grew up in North Dakota and has an American Indian heritage as part of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.

I am still thinking about the news. And may post a comment later when it has had time to sink in. But I think it’s important to post information about writers as people, and not just authors.

One thing I do know – writers can make a difference. Someone is always listening.

You can read the full article, Author Louise Erdrich rejects UND honor over ‘Sioux’ nickname, at Minnesota Public Radio.

Friday, April 20th, 2007

Related Links:

WRITERS ON WRITING; Two Languages in Mind, But Just One in the Heart by Louise Erdrich – great article on language, symbols, and culture, from the New York Times archive, May 22nd, 2000

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