Join us for a heart-expanding, pulse-quickening reading from local poets Jim Cihlar and William Reichard.
James Cihlar is the author of the poetry books Rancho Nostalgia (Dream Horse Press, 2013) and Undoing (Little Pear Press, 2008), and the chapbooks A Conversation with My Imaginary Daughter (Bloom, 2013), and Metaphysical Bailout (Pudding House Press, 2010). His writing has been published in the American Poetry Review, Court Green, Smartish Pace, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, Lambda Literary Review, and Forklift, Ohio. He is the recipient of a Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner, the 2012 Bloom Chapbook Prize, and two Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowships for Poetry.
William Reichard is the author of five collections of poetry: Two Men Rowing Madly Toward Infinity (Broadstone Books, 2016); Sin Eater (Mid-List Press, 2010); This Brightness (Mid-List Press, 2007); How To (Mid-List Press, 2004) was a finalist for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets; and An Alchemy in the Bones (New Rivers Press, 1999) won a MN Voices Prize. Poems from This Brightness and How To have been featured on NPR’s “Writers Almanac.” He has published two chapbooks, As Breath in Winter (MIEL Books, 2015); and To Be Quietly Spoken (Frith Press, 2001) and edited The Evening Crowd at Kirmser’s: A Gay Life in the 1940’s (Univ. of MN Press, 2001). Reichard's anthology of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, American Tensions: Literature of Identity and the Search for Social Justice, was published by New Village Press in April 2011.
Praise for Cihlar and Reichard:
Midway through James Cihlar’s splendid Rancho Nostalgia you’ll find some advice: “Keep reaching into the past / to grab something new.” One of the great wonders of this book full of wonders is that Cihlar follows his own instruction so brilliantly. Whether invoking scenes from classic movies or from the poet’s own life, the results are poignant, complex, and full of bracing insights. These poems feel like they’re being projected from a beguiling, not-quite-familiar place somewhere behind us, “close to the border, where / the light is good.” —Mark Bibbins
"There's no sound but our breathing, and the oars as they stroke the water." Accept the offered craft of William Reichard's transport. Put your oar in with his erotic lyricism, his mouth to your ears. Two Men Rowing Madly Toward Infinity is a steady ride through the wonderous landscape of a Midwestern rural American childhood, a turn at the bend of Gravelly Run, a pass by Baudelairean gallows, and a final glide to "listen to the wind in the reeds along the lakeshore, how they lash the air, how they sing." Scott Hightower
