Yesterday was a great day to take in some Shakespeare in the park. The Strange Capers have been doing a summer Shakespeare production in the park for a few years now. Last year they did Twelfth Night and did Midsummer’s Night Dream in 2010. The ultimate Shakespeare comedy about mistaken identity, Comedy of Errors is this year’s production. You can still catch it at 2pm on Saturday, July 14 and Sunday, July 15th.
Purchased in sections from 1890-1923, Powderhorn Park was designed by H.W.S. Cleveland in 1892 and the lake was dredged and a warming house was erected in 1893. Later in the year, the Financial Panic of 1893 delayed further development of the park until 1903.
The park was best known for speed skating and even had a football team in its early years. Now it is still an important part of the community: it is the terminus of the Mayday parade and always has a great Independence Day fireworks show.
So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read in school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Jeanette Winterson, from In Defense of Poetry (via beingblog)
Happy to have my first poems published in Sleetmagazine.com, along with work from Louis Jenkins, Ed Bok Lee, and a number of great fellow MFA candidates at Hamline.
The Pines played at the beautiful James J. Hill Library in March. I’d never been there before. A beautiful place! Might have to try to finagle some study time there.
