The Two Boots Word Vault

Published in 1983, Men Don't Dance in America became an important poem for the emerging men's movement. The chapbook followed in 1984.  The recording of this chapbook includes the preface of uncomfortable facts, some uncomfortable poems, some grievous, and some joyful poems.  

In January 1978 I hitchhiked from Phoenix to Los Angeles on my return from a stint in Mexico after six months working at a school and clinic in the state of Puebla. This story carries the psychic pain of unresolved family issues.

Ibn Hazm's treatise on love, The Dove's Neck-Ring, was one of the great influences upon the European Troubadours.  He suffered deep griefs in his early life, and while in the midst of such grief, a friend suggested that he write about love and its many aspects in the human soul, in order to deal with his grief.  The Dove's Neck-ring is a prose treatise interspersed with Ibn Hazm's poetry.  These are but a few of those poems.

In 1983 I wrote this opinion editorial for the Frogtown Forum, a St. Paul, Minnesota neighborhood newspaper.  I was born in that neighborhood, just like my grandmother and father. My great-grandfather and his father-in-law had emigrated from Austria. When I was working in Frogtown as a community organizer, my son was born and spent much time with me in the neighborhood.

From 1997 until 2005 I taught at-risk youth at the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Red Wing. An edited version of this essay appeared in Parabola, a magazine of myth and meaning, in its 2003 Summer issue.

 The Minnesota Men's Singing Group met with Robert Bly for almost 25 years. In 2007 I put together a small chapbook of my versions of Sufi poems for the group. This episode is the second of two recordings of those poems.

 The Minnesota Men's Singing Group met and sang with Robert Bly for almost 25 years. In 2007 I put together a small chapbook of my versions of Sufi poems for the group. This episode is the first of two recordings of those poems.

Poets and essayists, Timothy Young and Thomas R. Smith talk about Poetry as an examination of Life in many different ways.  The conversation took place in September 2014 at the Minnesota Men's Conference at Camp DuNord near Ely, Minnesota. Music from Dalyce Elliott's Blue Azalea.