John Schuerman is a self-taught artist and independent curator. His artwork reflects his deep interest in nature both human and nonhuman. His aesthetic style and social consciousness formed as he grew up on a dairy farm in southern Wisconsin. Schuerman is an environmental, and documentary artist, exploring the physical, social, and psychic landscapes through drawing, video, photography, and walking-based art forms. His artwork has been presented in numerous exhibitions locally and nationally.
His curatorial projects engage viewers on today’s most pressing issues: empathy, human overpopulation, gun violence, money, time, nationalism, identity, conflict, environmentalism, and abuses of power. See more of his work online at www.schuermanfineart.com.
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INTERVIEWS
Ronnie Pontiac and American Metaphysical Religion | by Zack Kopp Grant Maierhofer: Keeping the Circulating Happening | by Alex Kies Amanda Gunn: Black Pleasure vs. Black Joy | by Eileen G’Sell
FEATURES
If and Only If: Imaginary books reviewed | by Scott F. Parker The New Life | a comic by Gary Sullivan Remembering Brian O’Doherty (1928–2022) | by Richard Kostelanetz
Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Thinking, Inquiry, and Hope | Sarah Bakewell | by John Toren Quantum Criminals:Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, And Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan | Alex Pappedemas and Joan LeMay | by Angelo Gentile The Tribe:Portraits of Cuba | Carlos Manuel Álvarez | by Jesus Francisco Sierra Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City: A Memoir | Jane Wong | by Genevieve Hartman Soundwriting: A Guide to Making Audio Projects | Tanya K. Rodrigue and Kyle D. Stedman | by Cam Miller Jean Conner: Collage | Rory Padeken, ed. Mina Loy: Strangeness is Inevitable | Jennifer R. Gross, Ann Lauterbach, Roger L. Conover, & Dawn Ades, eds. Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer | Diana Seave Greenwald | by Patrick James Dunagan
FICTION REVIEWS
Solenoid | Mircea Cărtărescu | by Garin Cycholl Design Flaw | Hugh Sheehy | by Justin Courter Opium and Other Stories | Géza Csáth | by Zoe Berkovitz The English Experience | Julie Schumacher | by Eleanor J. Bader Welcome Me To The Kingdom | Mai Nardone | by Nick Hilbourn Nothing Special | Nicole Flattery | by Neil Serven As Far As You Can Go Before You Have To Come Back | Alle C. Hall | by Sandra Hager Eliason
POETRY REVIEWS
The Loveliest Vowel Empties: Collected Poems | Meret Oppenheim | by John Bradley Gala | Lynne Shapiro | by Patrick Pritchett Roadmap: A Choreopoem | Monica Prince | by Alex Carrigan The Dragonfly | Amelia Rosselli | by Greg Bem 40 Weeks | Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach | by Gale Hemmann Whatever’s Forbidden the Wise | Anthony Madrid | by David Brazil Diaries of a Terrorist | Christopher Soto | by Walter Holland Good Grief, The Ground | Margaret Ray | by Joanna Acevedo
COMICS REVIEW
The Planetoid and Other Stories | Joe Orlando and Al Feldstein | by Paul Buhle
To purchase issue #111 using Paypal, click here. To become a member and get quarterly issues of Rain Taxi delivered to your door, click here.
At the time this was a final piece, but it actually created the space and thought process to begin Indiscernible Elements: Calcium. The painting is an exploration of the next life, after the process of grieving the planet. Bringing the question, after grieving is the future of the planet only a fairytale? Visit Korynn Newville at: www.newvillekorynn.com.
Wednesday, September 13, 2 pm Central Free Virtual Event (registration required)
Rain Taxi proudly presents Anne Enright, one of Ireland’s greatest living writers, to celebrate the U.S. publication of her newest book, The Wren, The Wren—a searing story about the ravages of love across three generations of women that will both break and warm your heart. At this unique event, Enright will be in conversation with acclaimed American author Francine Prose. Join us for an exploration of literary fiction at its finest!
Book Purchasing Information: The Wren, The Wren, other books by Anne Enright, and a selection of titles by Francine Prose, are available from Magers & Quinn Booksellers at the link below. Don’t forget, when you buy books at an event, you support not only the authors and their publishers, but a great independent bookstore and the event host.
Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, famed Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless, Nell leaves her mother Carmel’s home to find her voice as a writer and live a life of her choosing. Carmel, too, knows the magic of her Daddo’s poetry—and the broken promises within its verses. When Phil abandons the family, Carmel struggles to reconcile “the poet” with the man whose desertion scars Carmel, her sister, and their cancer-ridden mother. The Wren, The Wren brings to life three generations of women who contend with inheritances of both abandonment and a sustaining love that is “more than a strand of DNA, but a rope thrown from the past, a fat twisted rope, full of blood.” In sharp prose studded with crystalline poetry, Enright masterfully braids a family story of longing, betrayal, and hope.
"These pages practically crackle with intelligence, compassion and wit. Phil McDaragh is so real I almost googled him. The Wren, The Wren might just be Anne Enright’s best yet."
“A true masterpiece by one of our greatest novelists. Rich, emotional and brilliantly observed, Anne Enright’s eighth novel, The Wren, The Wren, may even beat her Booker-winner, The Gathering."
“A novel where shards of brilliance flash in every direction.”
About the Authors:
Anne Enright is the author of seven previous novels, most recently Actress, as well as story collections and nonfiction. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including the Man Booker Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards. She lives in Dublin.
Francine Prose is a novelist and critic whose most recently published book is CLEOPATRA: Her History, Her Myth. Coming up next is a memoir titled 1974: A Personal History, to be published by Harper next year. Her previous books include the novels The Vixen, Goldengrove, A Changed Man, and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, and the New York Times nonfiction bestseller Reading Like A Writer: A Guide For People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want to Write Them. She writes frequently for the New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books and lives in New York City.
Holy Profane / Permitted Forbidden Gouache, ink and pencil on watercolor paper, 9” X 11” / 2018
Raised amidst Yiddish endearments, I learned how to draw very young. Political activism in high school, including Ban the Bomb, Civil Rights, and Anti-War demonstrations, led to a few years on Magic Forest Farm, a leaderless, egalitarian, West Coast commune. My drawings of country hippie life, (under the name Judith St. Soleil) were published in several books, including Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Epilogue. Thus I became a professional artist before I even graduated college.
Along with raising three children, I studied Art and Psychology at Cooper Union, Lone Mountain College and USC, all the while drawing, painting, making collages, publishing artist’s books, teaching art in colleges and writing for ARTweek Magazine (1986-1991), and since 2000, as Art Editor of NASHIM, Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues (U.of Indiana Press).
Since 1993 I have been designing and publishing limited edition and unique books, under the imprint Bright Idea Books. These have been acquired by numerous public and private collections, including Yale U, The New York Public Library, UCLA, U. of WA, U. of Denver, U. of Michigan, Arthur Jaffe Center for Book Arts, and UC, Berkeley.
My book Life Support Invitation to Prayer, (Penn State Press Graphic Medicine Series, 2019) was reviewed by Julie Stein for the Winter Issue 2020 of Rain Taxi.
In February 2022, an online interview with Rain Taxi’s Eric Lorberer, was conducted with myself and CS Giscombe about our book Train Music Writing and Pictures, (Omnidawn Publishing/ Oakland, 2021)
I worked on this book, which was originally called Praise Emptiness, all during the Covid pandemic, with Philip in LA and me in Jerusalem. Considering art from every era of my adult life, he chose to include so many, that Philip eventually changed the title to Praise Emptiness Essays Verbal and Visual.
I would like to mention how I came to use hand-drawn letter forms for the book cover and chapter titles. I was at a friend’s house and a book cover with a hand-drawn font caught my eye. It was Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I loved how it looked and tracked down the designer, Jon Gray (who goes by 318.gray). I was inspired by his work to hand draw the words on the book cover and all the chapter titles. This gives, I think, the weighty content of the book a bit of a cheering up, “Unhappiness,” on page 33, being the best example.
To purchase issue #110 using Paypal, click here. To become a member and get quarterly issues of Rain Taxi delivered to your door, click here.
INTERVIEWS
Judith Margolis and Philip Miller: Let Us Now Praise Emptiness | interviewed by Yael Samuel Rebecca Goodman: Why Write About the Shoah Now? | interviewed by David Moscovich Yxta Maya Murray: Art and Atrocity | interviewed by Will Corwin Patrick Parr: Slice of Life | interviewed by Arthur Shattuck O’Keefe
FEATURES
If and Only If: Imaginary books reviewed | by Scott F. Parker The New Life | a comic by Gary Sullivan
Love, Loosha: The Letters of Lucia Berlin & Kenward Elmslie | Chip Livingston, ed. | by W. C. Bamberger My Life as a Godard Movie | Joanna Walsh | by Joseph Houlihan Hotel Splendide | Ludwig Bemelmans | by Phia Holland Postscripts | John Barth | by Allan Vorda A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe | Milan Kundera | by Steven G. Kellman Not the Camilla We Knew: One Woman’s Path from Small-Town America to the Symbionese Liberation Army | Rachael Hanel | by Joseph Houlihan Saved: Objects of the Dead | Jody Servon and Lorene Delany-Ullman | by Tom Patterson
FICTION REVIEWS
An Autobiography of Skin | Lakiesha Carr | by Nick Hilbourn Any Other City | Hazel Jane Plante | by Eleanor J. Bader City of Blows | Tim Blake Nelson | by Chris Barsanti Siblings | Brigitte Reimann | by Daniel Byronson Mrs. S | K Patrick | by Linda Stack-Nelson Tell Me I’m an Artist | Chelsea Martin | by Joseph Houlihan The Loophole | Naz Kutub | by Nick Havey
POETRY REVIEWS
Early Works | Alice Notley The Speak Angel Series | Alice Notley | by Patrick James Dunagan A Summer Day in the Company of Ghosts | Wang Yin | by Jeffrey Cyphers Wright Spectacle | Lauren Goodwin Slaughter | by Havilah Barnett in ghostly onehead | J. D. Nelson | by Zack Kopp Paradise is Jagged | Ann Fisher-Wirth | by Jacob Butlett Triptychs | Sandra Simonds | by Tiffany Troy The Wine Cup | Richard Berengarten | by Michael Jennings Lyon Street | Marc Zegans | by Lisa Francesca
COMICS REVIEWS
Armed with Madness: The Surreal Leonora Carrington | Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot | by Paul Buhle
To purchase issue #110 using Paypal, click here. To become a member and get quarterly issues of Rain Taxi delivered to your door, click here.
On September 13, 2023, the Twin Cities-based literary organization Rain Taxi presented a virtual event with acclaimed Irish author Anne Enright as the kickoff to its annual Twin Cities Book Festival; Enright discussed her new novel, The Wren, The Wren (Norton), with celebrated American author Francine Prose. In this unique book launch for the U.S. publication of the novel, the two writers discussed how the book came to be, the role of poetry in it, the anti-Romantic stance of Irish women writers, and more. A replay of the event (with optional closed captions) is free to view at Rain Taxi’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/raintaxiinc.
ANGELA RODEL
Friday, July 28, 2023
Rain Taxi was delighted to present translator Angela Rodel for a pop-up literary salon in celebration of her receiving, with author Georgi Gospodinov, this year’s International Booker Prize for the novel Time Shelter — the first time a Bulgarian work of fiction has won this prestigious prize. Rodel (originally from Minnesota!) discussed her translation work and life in Sofia with Rain Taxi editor Eric Lorberer. The event took place in the home of Rain Taxi Board member Eric Ortiz.
MEGAN KELSO
Thursday, June 8, 2023
Acclaimed cartoonist Megan Kelso made her first visit to Minnesota to celebrate the publication of her new book, Who Will Make the Pancakes (Fantagraphics). Kelso gave a reading enhanced with audio and was then joined by local cartoonist and Uncivilized Books publisher Tom Kaczynski. The reading took place at Next Chapter Books in Saint Paul.
RAJA SHEHADEH
Wednesday, May 17, 2023
Renowned Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh began his US tour for We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I (Other Press) with a Rain Taxi sponsored event in the Twin Cities! Shehadeh read briefly from his book, gave a scintillating talk about its genesis, and then was in conversation with Joseph Farag, a professor at the University of Minnesota who specializes in Palestinian literature. This event was held at the East Side Freedom Library and co-sponsored by the Arab American culture organization Mizna. Thank you to all! A video of the event (with optional closed captions) is free to view at Rain Taxi’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/raintaxiinc.
RAIN TAXI 25TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY
Wednesday, May 10, 2023
On May 10, 2023, Rain Taxi held a belated 25th anniversary celebration at the newly restored Granada Theater in uptown Minneapolis, with musical performances, author readings, and fantastic food and drinks! Thank you to everyone who celebrated this milestone with us.
This event was co-sponsored by DISPATCH and the Granada Theater.
TWIN CITIES INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE DAY PASSPORT 2023
April 24-29, 2023
Another successful Independent Bookstore Day is in the books! Thousands flocked their favorite indie bookstores with the Twin Cities Bookstore Passport in hand to celebrate.
This event was sponsored by Finishing Line Press, The Givens Foundation for African-American Literature, Graywolf Press, Professional Editors Network, The Book House in Dinkytown, Candlewick Press, The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library, Haymarket Books, Lerner Publishing Group, The Loft Literary Center, Milkweed Editions, Mizna, and the University of Minnesota Press.
If you’re a poet—and if you work hard and make attentive, patient discoveries—you can expand the range of what a poem can do by finding new forms, new sets of moves that your language can make. If you’ve had unusual experience—lived an unusual, lucky, or difficult life, say—you can expand the range of what a poem can show and say by building that experience into your poems. If there’s a group of people like you whose experience isn’t represented in poems—or if it’s not represented often, or particularly well—you can do important political work by representing it. And if you’ve got access to an unusual conjunction of languages, ways to use words and to make yourself understood—say, Thai and Croatian, or Spanish, Catalan, and Cantonese, or the special talk of the Parisian underworld—you might be able to expand the range of what poems can do by translating, adapting, or making truly new work in a target language using what you learned from your source.
John Lee Clark is all four kinds of poet at once. This first book of Clark’s own poems (he edited the anthology Deaf American Poetry, published by Gallaudet University Press in 2009) does not just reflect (whatever that means) his experience as a DeafBlind creator, moving in Deaf and DeafBlind cultures as well as in other literary circles. It also shows new forms, new ways to use English, as in Clark’s slateku, dependent on puns generated by the two-sided slate used in pre-electronic Braille. Clark’s work imports into English new kinds of intimacy, sarcasm, and communal defense, from American Sign Language and from the less common language Protactile, used (as the name implies) by DeafBlind people who communicate via touch.
These kinds of translation reflect Clark’s life in between languages. He considers how to frame his tactile, translated, uncommonly embodied and uncommonly mediated day-to-day so that people like me (nondisabled, non-Deaf) can dive in. And I want to dive in. He’s writing at once for people like me and to bolster like-minded figures, and he’s funny, angry, inviting, tender, genuine: “I have been filmed and photographed for free,” he writes in a prose poem with pointers to John Clare. “It costs so much to smile…. I would that I were a dragonfly curled up between your finger and your thumb.”
That’s a Clark original. Here’s a sample translation, from the Protactile of Oscar Chacon: “At the base of your forearm, the lumberjack is surprised. Still standing! What’s going on? Rubbing chin.” And here are lines sliced from an elegy in monostichs for the DeafBlind creator Nicholas Saunderson (1682-1739): “He made a calculating machine with strings and pins and called it Palpable Arithmetic…. Go on feel what it says.” This caustically titled volume also covers the near-dissolution of a marriage, Clark’s life as a son and a father, and his early education—it’s got range. It’s got centuries of history. It’s got portraits, too: the teacher “Mrs. Schultz,” for example, who tried and failed to understand “the Clark boy,” and “The Politician,” whose signed faux pas puts John F. Kennedy’s famous jelly-doughnut remark in the shade (I won’t spoil the joke: read the book).
Is it okay to say, of a DeafBlind writer, that his work sounds like nothing else? Because, to this hearing reader, it’s true. Clark hasn’t just put his life into verse and prose poems; he’s felt and manipulated and explored and expanded what poetry in English—in print, to the ear, on the fingertip—can do. He’s got puns, euphonies, wordplays, cleverly arranged syllabics, as in those slateku: “Hollywood / Smoothly wraps / Hollywood / Soothingly warps.” And he’s also funny, sometimes exhausted, and more often exasperated in a way that you might recognize if anyone has ever called you “brave” for attempting to live your daily life: “Let go of my arm. I will not wait / until I’m the last person on the plane.” Or: “Can’t I pick my nose / without it being a miracle?”
Click below to purchase this book through Bookshop and support your local independent bookstore:
Once again, Rain Taxi's Twin Cities Literary Calendar is teaming up with great independent bookstores in the Twin Cities to celebrate Independent Bookstore Day by creating the 2021 Twin Cities Independent Bookstore Passport! Jam-packed with bookstore coupons and illustrations by local artist Kevin Cannon, the Passport is FREE to pick up, and a great way to celebrate the book purveyors that make our metro area so great.
This year, you can take a full week to get your Passport stamped at the stores you visit, keeping in mind your own safety precautions and those of the stores—and as always, each and every stamp activates a store coupon. Get it stamped at multiple stores for a greater level of discounts and entry into our prize drawings!
Read on to find out where to go and how
you can win prizes. Post photos of your bookstore journey to @RainTaxiReview with hashtags #bookstoreday and #bookstorepassport.
See you at the stores!
How to Participate
Pick up a Passport! You can get one any time between April 18 and April 24 at any of these stores:
NOTE: These stores will be open during the Passport week in different ways: in-person browsing, appointment only, curbside or window pickup only, pop-up activities planned, etc. Don’t forget to check each store’s web link for their status before visiting them! No matter their particular method, they are happy to give you a Passport and a stamp!
Visit any of those stores between April 18 and April 24, and ask a bookseller to stamp their page in your Passport. Of course, with a full week to collect stamps, we encourage you to take time to look for a book while you’re there—you never know what treasures you’ll find in a great independent bookstore!
Each stamp activates that store’s coupon; just bring your Passport back on a later date to redeem the coupon.
AVID READERS: Collect 10 stamps and ask the 10th store to stamp a special square that activates ALL 23 store coupons—the ones listed above and these additional stores that are currently online-only:
BOOKSTORE FANATICS: Collect all 18 stamps by end of day on April 24, and you’ll be entered to win a literary prize pack, each chock full of new books and other great prizes from our sponsors! Just ask the 18th store to stamp your Prize Entry form in the Passport, and then follow the instructions on that page to enter. Winners randomly chosen, and one lucky winner from this group will win the grand prize, see details on that below!
Rain Taxi will notify the winners via e-mail and send your prizes within one week of Independent Bookstore Day. Thank you, and happy book hunting!
Passport Sponsors
Thank you to this year's sponsors for their generosity and support of independent bookstores in the Twin Cities — please take a minute to visit their websites by clicking the links below and learning about all they have to offer!
Literary Prize Packs
Don’t forget that those people who visit ALL the stamp-giving stores over the course of the week will be entered in a drawing to win a Literary Prize Pack full of these great items!
Grand Prize
Our Grand Prize winner will receive a set of books selected by each of the independent bookstores participating in this year's Passport—and a handwritten note from each one explaining why they chose it!
These are just some of the great items in the Grand Prize!
Each store is offering a book that they feel is representative of both their store and their community of readers, so collectively this is a one-of-a-kind prize that reflects the wide array of reading tastes that the bounty of independent bookstores in our community affords. Good luck to all you intrepid readers, and from all the booksellers in the Twin Cities and Rain Taxi, we thank you for your support!
Check back as we add more features and reviews in the next months!
Interviews
Stop, Look, and Listen: An Interview with Rae Armantrout Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rae Armantrout talks about breaking “out of the evangelical cage” as well as the process of writing Finalists and topics from censorship to grandparenting. Interviewed by David Moscovich
Archival Woman: An Interview with Sarah Heady In her new book Comfort, Sarah Heady offers a refreshing new history of American women and the world surrounding them; the result illuminates not only the past, but our own tremulous moment. Interviewed by Greg Bem
A Wild Vitality: An Interview with Jerome Sala Poet Jerome Sala discusses satirizing the corporate content machine, his Chicago art and performance influences, looking for culture in the branding of everyday objects, and his new collection How Much. Interviewed by Jim Feast
Features
Three New Publishers' Self-Retrospectives Anthologies like these have critical value because they portray what publishers think they have achieved — and thus how they wish to be remembered. Reviewed by Richard Kostelanetz
George Mackay Brown: An Appreciation A virtuoso with words, the prolific Scottish poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, and essayist George Mackay Brown remains too little known in literary circles. Essay by Mike Dillon
Two New Translations of Max Jacob’s Poetry These new translations of two of Max Jacob’s major collections should be recognized as welcome and essential. Reviewed by Patrick James Dunagan
Poetry Reviews
Alive at the End of the World Saeed Jones Alive at the End of the World is the work of a maturing poet, and perhaps a transitional work: the already-accomplished Saeed Jones has moved from the subject of his boyhood to the volatile racist politics of the here and now, as well as his worries for the future. Reviewed by Walter Holland
psalmbook Laura Walker In her new book, Laura Walker manages to preserve a sense of prayer while also reshaping the psalm into something new—a significant literary achievement. Reviewed by John Bradley
How to Communicate John Lee Clark John Lee Clark hasn’t just put his life into verse and prose poems; he’s felt and manipulated and explored and expanded what poetry in English can do. Reviewed by Stephanie Burt
Water Has Many Colors Kiriti Sengupta Illustrated by Rochishnu Sanyal From epics to succinct one-liners, Kiriti Sengupta suits his poetic form to the subject, just as the titular folk idiom reminds us that water takes shape from the container in which it is held. Reviewedby Malashri Lal
Nonfiction Reviews
Watershed: Attending to Body and Earth in Distress Ranae Lenor Hanson Ranae Lenor Hanson offers a personal map against which readers might chart their own ways through the uneasy waters of the climate crisis. Reviewed by Elizabeth Bailey
Tuesdays in Jail: What I Learned Teaching Journaling to Inmates Tina Welling These reflections on teaching by novelist Tina Welling, which include non-judgmental sketches of her incarcerated students, make for a beautifully written memoir. Reviewed by George Longenecker
I Need to Tell You Cathryn Vogeley In a memoir that details moving from the solitude of shame to the loving acceptance of family, Cathryn Vogeley also offers an enlightening examination of secret adoptions. Reviewed by Sandra Eliason
Fiction Reviews
The Last Days of Terranova Manuel Rivas Translated by Jacob Rogers The Last Days of Terranova is like a bookstore: One is pleasantly overwhelmed by the many rich stories that sit near one another. Reviewedby John Kazanjian
Because I Loved You Donnaldson Brown Because I Loved You presents an adult assessment of the limits of love alongside a potent acknowledgment of the power of shared history. Reviewed by Eleanor J. Bader
Participation Anna Moschovakis As she does in her poetry, Anna Moschovakis effectively employs and interrogates language in her latest novel, Participation. Reviewed by Joseph Houlihan
Multi-Genre Reviews
I Made An Accident Kevin Sampsell Just as collage allows one to reorder the universe, poetry uses language to forge or reconstitute personal connections that may have been lost or rendered remote. Reviewed by Christopher Luna
Young Adult Fiction Reviews
Blaine for the Win Robbie Couch As depictions of queer characters become increasingly nuanced in YA fiction, Blaine for the Win will garner readers’ votes. Reviewed by Nick Havey
