t’s been a magical couple of weeks around here. Our wild backyard has had lots of visitors. For a house in an urban area, we have more creatures passing through than I would have imagined when we moved here 25 years ago.
Author Archives: Kathleen Cassen Mickelson
Introspection on a Stormy Summer Evening
I’m sitting at my dining room table on a Tuesday evening, patio door open to birds twittering their evening songs, air humid, sky rumbling. A big storm is on the way, according to the weather app on my phone.
Midsummer 2022
I’ve struggled with what to say in today’s post because, like millions of other Americans, I’m carrying so much disappointment, anger, frustration, and more over the recent Roe v. Wade decision. I’ve also been thinking how important refuge is right this minute – places where voices can fade away and arguments be suspended to allowContinue reading “Midsummer 2022”
Poetics of Travel: Ireland 2022
It was with a certain amount of pandemic-induced trepidation that I packed my 40-liter backpack for 10 days in Ireland the evening of May 27. In the morning, my partner Mick, our friends Mark and Mary, and I boarded a plane to Chicago, landed at O’Hare, boarded another plane to Dublin. We arrived in Dublin at the crack of dawn on a Sunday, then headed north in a rented Opel Crossland with a manual transmission.
A Little Irish Magic
Today’s post is on the fly. One Minnesota Crone is on the road. Whatever you’re doing as June kicks off, may it be something that opens your eyes.
Adaptation
The day after Mother’s Day, I decide to putz around in the garden. It’s been a long, cold spring; everything is emerging later than usual. My patience has worn thin, but not with the garden. With people.
The Creative Self and the Mother Self
Here in Roseville, Minnesota, it’s been a long cool journey from winter to this month of flowers popping open, trees in bloom, nesting birds, and Mother’s Day. This year, snow fell here the day after Easter and again some days after that. It was so disappointing, even if it did melt immediately. But May Day is upon us. We are unquestionably on our way to summer. And I’m thinking about motherhood. May does that to me.
A Conversation with Poet Joanne Durham
Just in time for National Poetry Month, poet Joanne Durham’s new book, To Drink from a Wider Bowl, is a generous, life-spanning collection of work that invites readers to drink in the world. Today, I’m offering readers an interview with Joanne that I hope will shed light on the poet behind the work.
National Poetry Month is Upon Us
Do you read poetry? If so, this is the month for you. There is poetry to suit every sensibility and reading level. My preference is for contemporary work, especially that of women poets. I have a few suggestions for you. My friends over at Gyroscope Review, a quarterly contemporary poetry journal that I co-founded withContinue reading “National Poetry Month is Upon Us”
Room to Make Art
This week’s writing happened in my makeshift art studio. The space is a piece of our laundry room into which I’ve wheeled a stainless steel table with painting supplies on the bottom shelf and where I’ve commandeered a wide windowsill for holding drying racks and a mason jar full of paint brushes.
One Minnesota Crone 