ST. PAUL’S POET LAUREATE

MAY 19, 2023 – When it comes to art and poetry, I know what I like and what I don’t like, and I really like the poetry of Don Brunnquell. This evening we attended a reading by Don, aided by several others, from a newly published collection of his poems, A World Together / Family Poems.

I’ve long known about Don’s voluminous works, but my only access to them was on the rare occasion when he’d read one about music—following one of my numberless practice sessions with Don’s wife Sally, my piano collaborator, in their gracious home in St. Paul.

Last fall I read more of Don’s work, when he participated in a poetry challenge called the “Grind,” wherein participants each wrote a poem every day for a month. This effort came on the heels of a much greater challenge. I’ll never forget the time late last summer when he and Sally visited us on our back porch, just before he began an arduous expedition. I was about to begin my own perilous journey, so we had plenty of notes—and concerns—to share. As Don mentioned at this evening’s event, “There’s nothing like [a wake-up call] to force you to focus on the things you’ve been putting off.”

In Don’s case he’d been deferring the considerable direct and delegated labor involved in publishing a handsome compendium of poems that represent a lifetime of work. First is selection of a theme. Second comes the choice of poems that fit the theme. Third is the task of editing the poems and fourth, organization in some cogent, appealing manner. Fifth are matters of “visual appeal”—font type and size; cover art, interior design. Sixth to be considered, prepared (and edited) are a foreword or preface, along with acknowledgments. Seventh is retention of a printer—and adoption of a budget—and eighth, a distribution and fulfillment system has to be developed. Then, to hold a big, splashy reading attended by legions—as this evening’s event was—countless details need to be orchestrated and directed. If it took a village to produce A World Together, there would’ve been no village without Don’s continuous efforts.

All of this remarkable work and focus came together splendidly this evening when Don took to the podium in the spacious, standing-room-only community space of the Unity Unitarian Church in St. Paul.

Even before taking into account Don’s particular circumstances, this production would’ve been plenty special. Ever more so because the past year for Don and Sally has been filled with extensive grandparenting of toddlers, long-distance (Colorado and Washington), as well as for long periods in their St. Paul home.

Yet, all the family time served as a driver and inspiration for this particular book of poems.

But all of the foregoing was merely setting the stage: the poems themselves are brilliant pearls, gems and jewels of the heart. They are wonderfully accessible in the same way as are works of Billy Collins, America’s Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003. In fact, I’d say that Don Brunnquell is St. Paul’s Poet Laureate from now to forever. Smart, funny, heartfelt, poignant and insightful—the poems of A World Together capture with rare clarity and facile style, the essence of civilization: familial ties.

Don is a remarkable human being in countless ways, but his poetry is a special showcase of long-practiced talent. This evening’s event was nothing less than poetic inspiration of the highest order.

Long live Don, and long live his poetry.

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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson