Poetry

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, poet Kevin Carollo struggles to navigate the sudden and jarring changes to everyday life. To help find meaning and purpose in the "new normal," Carollo straps on his shoes and returns to a part of his identity that he has neglected: long-distance running and long-form writing. It's not easy. Pandemic restrictions and the harsh, upper Midwest weather are discouraging. At the same time, Carollo's personal life is increasingly filled with questions and uncertainty, but as Carollo pushes through the miles he discovers the enduring forces and relationships he needs to keep moving forward. 

Aurora is a shimmering witness to Thom Tammaro’s bond with a place that he has come to know and obviously love. His stories about that day along the Red River, dry pods of milkweed, harvest time, hunters, closing the cabin, waiting for the first snowfall, and the demise of the buffalo are evidence of how much he has become a part of the Dakotas’ open horizon. The poems are beautiful and follow seasonal changes tending toward the autumnal and wintery, appropriate for a poet writing out of the Red River Valley. We see real night hawks “above the roof of the old science building at the university.” We see buffalo on the hills and meadows “sway like tall black grass,” and when we’re finished with considering the “voices of escape or return,” we can love the “pods of milkweed/ Red pine, blazing stars/ The purple clusters of September.” Besides this beautiful book (there have been three previous collections and two chapbooks), it’s time to celebrate Tammaro’s contribution to the literary life of the area. He has edited and curated many anthologies of thematic tributes, as well as a collection of Minnesota women poets from territorial days to the present. Working on that anthology with Thom and Connie Wanek was one of the delights of my literary career. Thom is a gem, a guiding star, and a guy who will spend hours to get your car started in a polar vortex snow storm. The same creative energy that made this beautiful book of poems floods Thom’s work in other areas, especially those that contribute to the literary world of the upper Midwest, bright as any aurora.

—Joyce Sutphen, Minnesota Poet Laureate 2011–2021