by Jason Smith | Jul 14, 2017 | Magazine Article
Caleb Whitney has thick forearms and a grip that could crush a coconut. A landscape gardener and firefighter from Baileys Harbor, Caleb was telling me about how he just got engaged to his girlfriend, Kristen Peil, and that his landscape business, Green Side Up, was...
by Steven Potter | Jul 14, 2017 | Magazine Article
Around the turn on a cobbled path that runs through Madison’s Olbrich Botanical Gardens, Peter Krsko perches on top of a ladder next to a tree, holding a handful of what look like unnumbered yardsticks. As visitors pass by, they pause and watch him add a few of the...
by Silke Schmidt | May 1, 2017 | Magazine Article
Buzz. Ouch. Slap. One down, one hundred quadrillion to go. While there are 3,500 mosquito species found worldwide, we only have to contend with 56 of them here in Wisconsin. This is cold comfort, though, when confronted by a swarm on a family hike or picnic. These...
by Ronnie Hess | May 1, 2017 | Magazine Article
Thomas J. Erickson’s first full-length poetry collection, The Biology of Consciousness, stopped me dead in my tracks, even before I cracked the cover. What on earth could the book or its title poem mean? Various sources tell me this: while not understood, the biology...
by Lisa Vihos | May 1, 2017 | Magazine Article
My measure of a poem’s quality is often found in the question, “How did the poet think of that?” If that poem should happen to begin an entire collection that has me asking that same question again and again, well, then I know I have something really special in my...
by Jason Smith | May 1, 2017 | Magazine Article
Novelist Nickolas Butler isn’t afraid to tackle big ideas in his writing. Set in a rural Wisconsin town, his first novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, is an exploration of friendship and the ties that bind us to home. Butler’s sophomore effort, set in and around the fictional...
