Review by Mack Hassler “One Day, about noon, going toward my boat, I was exceedingly surprised, with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore…. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719) In To Be Marquette, a fine mystery novel by the young writer Sharon Dilworth, who has three collections…
Review by Mack Hassler “Mixed Genres and True Heritages: From Trollope’s Ralph the Heir to Delany’s Dhalgren,” by D. M. Hassler. in Into Darkness Peering (Greenwood Press, 1997) Most of the nearly thirty titles I have posted at the U.P. Book Review have been single-authored books. This biographical…
Review by Mack Hassler “…so 1984 teaches us, the danger with which all men are confronted today, the danger of a society of automatons who will have lost every trace of individuality, of love…. Erich Fromm, “Afterword to 1984” (1949) I think good writers feel safe when they…
Review by Mack Hassler The Walloon Writers Review annual collection is inspired by Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. The Northern Shore of the UP from East to West is defined by the Big Lake with a small stretch of Lake Huron reaching toward Canada beyond the Bridge. On the…
Review by Mack Hassler “It is a poetry where the world becomes writing and language becomes the double of the world.” Octavio Paz I think Terri Martin is a clever and witty writer who comprehends the dynamic link of language to her world, not only as…
Review by Mack Hassler “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” Matthew 4:19 Do the Right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” Mark Twain, epigraph to Chapter 22 One of the things that interests me about all of literature, reaching back even to…
Review by Mack Hassler “It is a poetry where the world becomes writing and language becomes the double of the world.” Octavio Paz I will blend in this review of Make It Go In the Snow ideas and effects that I have come across in my general reading on surrealism…
Review by Mack Hassler Recently I flew from O’Hare in Chicago to a conference at Moline, Illinois, and got a good look at the empty prairie West of the Windy City—wide open and empty like the UP. Two very big cities full of mob violence and major crime are the…
Review by Mack Hassler Lisa Fosmo, a fine UP poet, who identifies herself as a lifelong resident here currently living with her family in Escanaba and owning a camp West of Ishpeming, attended her first UPPAA spring conference in May 2024, says she was impressed and is now a new…
Review by Mack Hassler Yooper Ale Trails: Craft Breweries and Brewpubs of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a handsome publication by Classen and Stott from the publisher that is the imprint for so much directed at the UPPAA is a book filled with information, wonderful photos, and even a few “bookish” puzzles…
Review by Mack Hassler “…the Lord came down to see the City and the tower the people were building…. [he said] Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” Genesis 11: 5-7 Reading Genesis, by Marilynne Robinson (2024) The author of this…
Review by Mack Hassler “Therefore it was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of all.” Genesis 11:9 Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson (2024) God is, I think, often disappointed in his chosen people as they scatter but never gives up on them. This beautiful book is…
Review by Mack Hassler An early prose poem in this excellent collection of Yooper Poetry contains the Finn word vaaramaki, which means “danger hill.” The poem is by Kathleen M. Heideman who has some link to Finlandia University, formerly Suomi College, in Hancock. It may be now that even Finlandia…
Review by Mack Hassler Once the storytelling is done in Monsters, Relics and Dangers Unknown, this first volume of “The Kollrheim Chronicles,” Emerick, who will be the warrior savior for the Princess of the Golden Kingdom of Kollrheim, has barely begun his long and dangerous sea voyage. Atherton’s large-sized hero…
Indians and Other Misnomers of the Upper Great Lakes: The True Indigenous Origins of Geographic Place Names, by Phil Bellfy (Modern History Press, Ann Arbor, MI 2023), 154 pages pbk, $25.95. Brockway Mountain Stories: The History of Brockway Mountain Drive and Keweenaw Mountain Lodge, by Paul LaVanway (Mudminnow Press, Copper…
Review by Mack Hassler I had said in an earlier review of one of the many collections by Splake as well as in Clutch collections by Zoschke, which contain a lot of Splake, that I thought he was winding down his enormous output of short poems. In fact, I used…
Review by Mack Hassler I like a book that has resonance. Both fiction and non-fiction, whether history or memoir or journalism, can contain good resonance. Further, in my opinion, the best echo or resonance is with faith or philosophic issues. Therefore, to select two titles from what was at the…
Review by Mack Hassler Two texts in the general literature far from the UP come to mind as the reader listens to the strong first-person opening of Roadkill Justice: Featuring Yooper Woodswoman Nettie Bramble here, “Me and Ma live off the land. That and her government check. My name’s Nettle…
