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…
Review by Mack Hassler Trained as a medievalist but now working mostly with stories about Marquette in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Tyler Tichelaar has learned how to weave in and out of time references perhaps from his work with Chaucer or the King Arthur stories. He has done a…
Review by Mack Hassler We read just now of the latest honor for the writing of Sue Harrison: her induction into the UP Literary Hall of Fame. So this fine new novel The Midwife’s Touch by an established award-winner for our literature comes at an auspicious time. It is a…
Review by Mack Hassler The self-publishing of one’s work can, now and then, lead to books that are very strange and that hardly fit into any pattern of literature. I Married a Troll: My Husband Married a Yooper is a nicely printed and well-bound, tidy book in appearance. At the…
Review by Mack Hassler “It’s who you are when time’s up that matters.” Obituary for Anne Perry, NY Times, 4/13/23 Non-fiction, investigative reporting, and autobiography are so important to me for lively and vital UP literature. Sharon Kennedy, who has lived and worked “above the bridge” but not quite into…
Review by Mack Hassler North Country: A Pedagogical Almanac contains 19 short non-fiction essays of Memoir about the first arrival as a new Yooper to what she calls “… to live on the northern edge of beyond.” p. 11. Carolyn Dekker writes about her experiences since 2015 as a young…
Review by Mack Hassler A friend and colleague and a retired English professor from Kent State, David R. Ewbank, who is one of the editors of the works of Robert Browning, has published a small book titled Fairy Tales for Adults (2012). In my own reading, the review I did…
Review by Mack Hassler The Diaries of a Marshall Islands Peace Corps Volunteer (1975 – 1977) is a non-fiction volume that is loaded with wonderful photographs from a part of the globe about as distant from the snowy North as one can get as well as distant in time from…
Review by Mack Hassler So many people never live long enough nor have the inclination to write a memoir. Those who do have a great responsibility. Not only memory and accurate detail but also they need the art to construct something of imagination. I think Joe Kirkish steps up nicely…
Review by Mack Hassler I had just finished reading the 2023 collection of Clutch, which is published just at the edge of the UP, when this collection of poems by Michael Butterworth came in the mail from much farther distant but still with what I hear as deep resonance for…
Review by Mack Hassler I am a great believer in serendipity and feel lucky that during the past year, my name has gotten linked to the work of Zoschke as well as to Zoschke on Splake (see several reviews of mine over recent months) because now I am given a…
Review by Mack Hassler I think there is no argument that our writers who set themselves up as our poets are the real forerunners in language development. Storytellers entertain us, historians order and give us useful general ideas, comic tone writers defend us against the many predators that lurk in…
