BELLS
(1611 Madison
ST NE, Miinneapolis, February 17, 2026)
1611 is from 1911 the sound of church bells From the old country crossing the cold Atlantic on immigrant ships Muffled in sea smoke kept hidden in hearts & trunks a piece of Trondheim Skommars
Gdañsk or the Kashubian Forest surviving the seas Carried to this house chiming down through the decades echoes echoing Long in old houses Northeast Minneapolis I am getting dressed & go out to wait under the glacial stars in the Midwest cold For our sushi
A NEW PHASE
I'm in the quietness of snow falling on snow
—TANEDA SANTŌKA
Like
everybody else, I go through phases in my life. I remember a few; there was the
hopeful phase, which didn't last very long, nor did the angry phase. Too much
disappointment and stress. The hopeless phase lasted longer, but it wasn't any
fun. Eventually I reached the seasonal phase; the blue spring light, warm
summer evenings, leaves turning in the fall, the first snow filling the house
with silence. And later, beautiful mornings and nights with my love. Listening
to Bach. That's when life finally started to make sense. But it was taken. Now
I've reached the unknown phase. It's intense; eyes bulging, mouth half open, my
breath coming in shallow wheezes, like at a high altitude, some ways up a big
mountain, perhaps, seeing the peak high above under a multitude of stars,
unreachable, but beautiful and something to behold as my eyes slowly fill with
snow.
SAGEMONO
TRIPTYCH
1. For Angella Who
Gave Me a Sagemono of Old Wood
(February
16 - March 16, 2025)
My Sagemono is made of cracked
red hardwood lined by years of
use The netsuke’s gone maybe it broke or got lost in Yamaguchi Or in Reykjavik I’d like to think the owner simply wore it out Now you Angella have made a new netsuke in the ancient way Two small singing stones given voices by mollusks at the water's edge On a distant shore where they made their homes of flint stones & salt water I think old Bashō would have enjoyed wearing it on his journey to The interior the narrow road to the north the road to beauty Now only I will wear it attached to my belt on my morning walks
2. Oxen
(June 29 - July 3, 2025)
One of the greatest netsuke
masters of all was Tomotada Kyoto’s finest in the 1780s Edo period He taught the art of miniature sculpture carving worked in jade & wood He loved the oxen most of all but never told anybody why He made lions wolves dogs monkeys in ivory but his jade oxen... There were three masters Tomotada considered the best among them The netsuke had to be beautiful yes but just as important Was harmonizing it
with other elements inrō ojimes Polishing it smooth its soft rounded curves alive this big animal Ah... Tomotada sighs & looks out the window rests his tired eyes On a lemon tree as the dark leans against it like a beggar monk Whispering something in the quiet of evening an ancient old prayer Even the oxen’s bellowing sound like mumbles sweet little secrets From somewhere far off where they lie in the lush grass inside their jade stones
3. In
Cissi Klein's Park
(June
11, 2025)
First
Sagemono walk around my
neighborhood Buddhist scroll
inside Belly full of great Little Island Ceylon tea salami sandwich Walking by the fjord it’s sunny but the wind’s cold too cold to sit down So I keep walking the longest walk in a year the healing’s begun Hospitalsløkkan Kalvskinnet Ilsvikøra to Øya & back By the peacock’s house then I reach St Olaf’’s Well & the cathedral The carillon calls & silences all of us we’re a photo still & mysterious for an hour we even walk differently Maybe for ever the cracks Cohen sang about shimmering with light I write this poem to the centre of my life in Cissi Klein’s park A polite seagull stays with me for the whole time resting in the grass Or sits on the bench next to me watching my hand writing erasing Turning its head up looking into the weather into the blue sky
Dag T. Straumsvåg lives in Trondheim, Norway, and is the author and translator of twelve books of poetry, including The Emperor of Japan (above/ground press, 2026), The Mountains of Kong: New & Selected Prose Poems (Assembly Press, 2025), A Further Introduction to Bingo with Jason Heroux (above/ground press, 2024), and But in the Stillness (Apt. 9 Press, 2024). He co-founded the micro press A + D Trondheim | Minneapolis with his fiancé, the late great Angella Kassube in 2020. They published two bilingual books, Tom Hennen: Finn eit stille regn (Find a Quiet Rain, translations, 2024) and Michael Dennis: Spøkjelse i japanske drosjar (Ghosts in Japanese Taxis, translations, 2020). The press will continue, with creative director and designer Beth Elliott, Angella's long time friend, doing the cover art and book design. His poems have appeared in numerous journals in Norway and North America.