In 2007 Robert Bly introduced me before I read for the Minnesota Men's Conference. This was one of my favorite readings. A number of the poems were published in my second book, Herds of Bears Surround Us published by Red Drag...

On January 20, 2024 The Tributary Reading Series hosted a literary tribute to the great Minnesota writer, Frederick Manfred. This is the second of two recordings from that tribute at the MCN6 TV studio in Minneapolis.  

On January 20, 2024 The Tributary Reading Series hosted a literary tribute to the great Minnesota writer, Frederick Manfred. This is the first of two recordings from that tribute at the MCN6 TV studio in Minneapolis.  

On April 11, 2025, I spent the evening reading poems and telling two stories about my predicaments as a young man in Mexico and Alaska. Soul-singer David Ballman provided an acapella Soul-chorus commentary, and an percussion egg.  Thanks t...

This is a recording from April 27, 2019 at the 92nd Como Cottage Salon.

Over the years many have asked me, "What was it like to teach at Red Wing?" This episode is a recording of a short essay report about what it was like to be a teacher at the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Red Wing.

The podcast is the third in my Music Critic Series of poems. This collection, The Music Critic at the Baroque Festival. all began as quick notes made at various concerts.  Later I turned the notes into poems. My wonderfully talented sister...

This is one of my Music Critic chapbooks.  While accompanying my future wife to her weekly gigs at a Bloomington Tandoor Restaurant, I would quickly draft lines to form into cinquains. Her trio's instruments included tabla, guitar, and her...

Music has been a part of my poetic life for over 40 years.  Each of my published books holds poems about music and musicians, and I have performed and recorded poems with musicians throughout my life with poetry.  My Music Critic Tril...

Walton Stanley and I gave a presentation on Communal Soul and its needs to The Fifth Direction, an online community interested in myth, poetry, story, and the development of community.  This presentation is similar to the one I gave at the...

Poets Mike Hazard, Patricia Barone, Norita Dittberner-Jax and I read poems about family relationships, going around one after another with deep feelings rising in the room among the poets and the listeners.

Brother and Sister is a folktale collected by the Grimm Brothers and was the springboard for my 1992 essay, Drinking at the Well of Instinct--the Way of the Hunter.  This recording was made as I told the tale to the Folktale Gardening Club...

From 1997 until 2006 I taught at-risk youth at the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Red Wing Minnesota. This section of my 2010 book includes the poems I wrote about my time there.   

In 2015 my wife Dalyce published her first picture book for children. She wrote, illustrated, and composed the theme for her book.   Sue Scott, previously with The Prairie Home Companion, narrated the audio version. Dan Chouinard composed ...

Poet and friend Maureen Skelly invited Dalyce and me onto her show at KFAI 90.3 Fresh Air Radio on December 15, 2024.  In the 1980s Maureen and I were cohosts with Roy McBride and Susu Jeffreys for the weekly Northland Literary Review. It ...

Here is the first section of my 2010 book of poetry, Herds of Bears Surround Us, published by Red Dragonfly Press.

At a Como Cottage Salon I told the Greek Tale of Orion.  My version tells of how Orion was cast into the night sky, and chases Scorpio because of the shadow in Apollonian divinity.

On December 22, 2018 Como Cottage Salon Series hosted an Evening of Stories. The storytellers included Timothy Young, Jesse Young, Walton Stanley, and Marty MIller.  This is the recording of a tale from the Finnish saga, The Kalevala. ...

Thomas R. Smith introduced me to the poetic form of the Cinquain. At the beginning of the 20th century Adelaide Crapsey, who loved haiku poetry, thought that American English did not suit the haiku form and developed the cinquain as an American...

Decades ago I found this story among those collected by William Butler Yeats.  I always felt that highly educated men needed to hear it and learn something. In 2012 I told it at the Minnesota Men's Conference Winter gathering, Into the Bel...

On October 29, 2022 the Como Cottage Salon Series featured a poetry scrum with poets Thomas R. Smith, Michael Moos, James Lenfestey, and Timothy Young.  A poetry scrum is our way of describing a poetry reading where the poets take turns ch...

There is a deep yearning for communal feelings in our digital age. There is a deep grief at its loss.  In my ruminations on the 2024 presidential election, I see that yearning across all divisions and divides. Individualism as a cultural c...

Juan Ramon Jimenez admired Walt Whitman as a truly aristocratic man.  At the 40th anniversary of the Minnesota Men's Conference, I present this essay about the type of man I believe should be considered an Aristocrat.

My violinist wife, Dalyce Elliott Young composed and performed five small vignettes to play when she read the Beatrix Potter's tales, Squirrel Nutkin, Benjamin Bunny, Two Bad Mice, Tom Kitten, and Flopsy Bunnies to children at storytelling even...