Will you be reading Cheerfulness for an Audio Book version? We enjoy your writing very much but decades of a regular diet of your voice on the radio, CDs, and audio books, have spoiled us. Your thoughts and your voice have become inseparable in our minds and hearts. Please, please, please - read to us!
Rats are likeable enough little creatures in themselves. Like humans, when there are a lot of them crowded together they do become a bit much. That goes double when there's both a lot of rats and a lot of humans, all crowded in together.
Near us there's a spot by a river with lots of bird-feeders on posts. There a little community of rats living below the posts. Plenty of bird food regularly put out, and the rats and birds happily share. They seem to get along together well enough. Lake Wobegon style really.
Hi GK, I must refute your reply to Gwendolyn Soper as having written the first poem about you. I sent one in 22 years ago that you may actually NOT have seen, since you were surrounded by a doting staff of Lutheran English majors, who no doubt had huge bags of fan mail to scour through, and mine may not have made the cut. So, in hopes that you may finally read it, here it is:
Not to be a wet blanket, but five years ago my prose poem "A Dream of Garrison Keillor" appeared in my prose poem collection, WINDY DAY AT KABEKONA (White Pine Press). My wife Krista and I for many years woke to your morning program on Minnesota Public Radio, and I think it's that "radio" voice I was hearing in my dream. The poem is the record of an actual dream, and I know that in the way of dreams in general it's more about me than you. Still, consider it a sincere tribute from my unconscious. And maybe there's some essence of your cheerfulness in my dream-Garrison's ability to speak the dawn in the dark of night.
Thomas R. Smith
River Falls, WI
A DREAM OF GARRISON KEILLOR
According to my dream, he writes incessantly. We sit near each other on uncomfortable molded plastic chairs, looking out at a darkened airport runway. The night feels thick and deep. The airport bars have closed. A few lonely lights pierce the enveloping murk.
He asserts in his familiar radio voice: “It’s a beautiful morning.” What’s this? Anyone can see it’s the middle of the night. Does he have some special power to see far off where day has already broken while the rest of us sit in darkness? Or is this some sort of literary conceit?
Suddenly I realize that he is writing, testing phrases aloud as he sets them down in his notebook. Well, who knows how the dawn actually arrives? Comforted, I listen in the dead black airport night as he goes on intoning calmly: “Sun reddens the chimneys. . . . Heavy-budded trees glimmer over the rooftops. . . . Oh ever-fresh, forever lovely spring! . . . It’s a beautiful morning.”
I read a disturbing story in Monday's NYT about the rats in the city. In addition to exterminating them maybe they should try contraception like they do with the deer. We have deer and wild turkeys where I live, but the neighborhood cats keep the mice and other small mammals away. We have to put netting and wire fences around all of our bushes and plants to keep them from being eaten.
I remember those rats crawling around the subway track rails. Big mothers. $155K/year might not cover it.
"The Gift Is You!"
“Do not neglect the gift you have….”
1 Timothy, 4-14
Your gift is slowly opened
With wonderment in your eyes.
For the gift is grandly wrapped
With layers of ribboned ties.
“It must have taken days,” you think,
“To adorn a gift this way!”
As the gaily colored paper
Lends a grandeur to the day.
For, it’s a day of gifting, wishing-well.
Of sharing time and care.
As we show the Christmas Spirit true
In every gift we bear.
As you untwine, undo the box,
A troubling thought you see:
“Why, I so often wrap myself
And hide the real me.”
For wondrous-wrapped we truly are,
Gifts worth more than gold.
Yet we must give ourselves away,
The gift of self unfold.
Your gift in hand, you’ve opened now,
Crumpled tissue you peer through.
For, on the bottom is a mirror.
The gift you’re given is you.
Tom King December,1981
Will you be reading Cheerfulness for an Audio Book version? We enjoy your writing very much but decades of a regular diet of your voice on the radio, CDs, and audio books, have spoiled us. Your thoughts and your voice have become inseparable in our minds and hearts. Please, please, please - read to us!
Rats are likeable enough little creatures in themselves. Like humans, when there are a lot of them crowded together they do become a bit much. That goes double when there's both a lot of rats and a lot of humans, all crowded in together.
Near us there's a spot by a river with lots of bird-feeders on posts. There a little community of rats living below the posts. Plenty of bird food regularly put out, and the rats and birds happily share. They seem to get along together well enough. Lake Wobegon style really.
Hi GK, I must refute your reply to Gwendolyn Soper as having written the first poem about you. I sent one in 22 years ago that you may actually NOT have seen, since you were surrounded by a doting staff of Lutheran English majors, who no doubt had huge bags of fan mail to scour through, and mine may not have made the cut. So, in hopes that you may finally read it, here it is:
GARRISON
I know you, Gary Keillor
I know what you’re up to
All the folks say
You’re the great writer and teller
Of Midwest Americana
But in reality
You’re the consummate
Non-traditional, unordained
Evangelical minister
In your roundabout way
You are following
In the footsteps
Of your parents
Disciples, Brethren
Whatever
And although you edit
Their fundamentalism
They are surely proud
You do more for Jesus
In one radio program
Than all the money-grubbing
Tear-jerking, wig-wearing
Televangelists do in a year
I listened today to your
Easter worship service
Pastor Ingqvist bound by guilt
Phone confession by Father Emil
Ecumenism on the prairie
Did the tear-jerking trip on me
A Dylan song took on new meaning
As I heard the words to
“We Shall Be Free”
Through fresh ears
I see your evangelism
A new ecumenism
A mending of schism
A new baptism
Fresh catechism
I hear you saying and singing
That we can come together
Casting asde our different
Pictures of Jesus
Texts of Muhammad
Statues of Buddha
Tablets of Moses
(Blank tablets of Agnosticism)
And embracing the one God
Who made us all
If I hear you saying that
Even though you don’t say that
Just like the show isn’t church
Then others hear I am sure
The same clear message
And know the world
Is still truly a safe place
Roger Krenkler
3/31/2002
Dear Garrison,
Not to be a wet blanket, but five years ago my prose poem "A Dream of Garrison Keillor" appeared in my prose poem collection, WINDY DAY AT KABEKONA (White Pine Press). My wife Krista and I for many years woke to your morning program on Minnesota Public Radio, and I think it's that "radio" voice I was hearing in my dream. The poem is the record of an actual dream, and I know that in the way of dreams in general it's more about me than you. Still, consider it a sincere tribute from my unconscious. And maybe there's some essence of your cheerfulness in my dream-Garrison's ability to speak the dawn in the dark of night.
Thomas R. Smith
River Falls, WI
A DREAM OF GARRISON KEILLOR
According to my dream, he writes incessantly. We sit near each other on uncomfortable molded plastic chairs, looking out at a darkened airport runway. The night feels thick and deep. The airport bars have closed. A few lonely lights pierce the enveloping murk.
He asserts in his familiar radio voice: “It’s a beautiful morning.” What’s this? Anyone can see it’s the middle of the night. Does he have some special power to see far off where day has already broken while the rest of us sit in darkness? Or is this some sort of literary conceit?
Suddenly I realize that he is writing, testing phrases aloud as he sets them down in his notebook. Well, who knows how the dawn actually arrives? Comforted, I listen in the dead black airport night as he goes on intoning calmly: “Sun reddens the chimneys. . . . Heavy-budded trees glimmer over the rooftops. . . . Oh ever-fresh, forever lovely spring! . . . It’s a beautiful morning.”
Thanks, colleagues....it's been a long time since I thought of that. I think the mirror may need some Windex.
I read a disturbing story in Monday's NYT about the rats in the city. In addition to exterminating them maybe they should try contraception like they do with the deer. We have deer and wild turkeys where I live, but the neighborhood cats keep the mice and other small mammals away. We have to put netting and wire fences around all of our bushes and plants to keep them from being eaten.
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