John Calvin Rezmerski

photo by Barnett Photography

CONTACT

rez@gac.edu

215 Hazel Street
Mankato, MN 56001

507-345-5876

John Calvin Rezmerski
Mankato, Minnesota

BIO

John Calvin Rezmerski was recently appointed Poet Laureate of the League of Minnesota Poets. He has entertained hundreds of audiences around the upper midwest with his readings and performances, taught creative writing and journalism at Gustavus Adolphus College, and led writing and storytelling workshops for over 30 years. His poems have been published in magazines and anthologies as varied as The Wall Street Journal, Mennonite Life, New Letters, Chelsea, Nursing Outlook, Poems of Exotic Places, The Party Train, The Sumac Reader, and Tales of the Unanticipated.

His most recent project was organizing the Cambria Eisteddfod, a bardic competition and festival of poetry and music to be held at Morgan Creek Vineyards near Cambria, Minnesota on June 25th, 2007. Years ago, as founder and coordinator of Minnesota Poetry Outloud, he took groups of poets to perform poetry and music in small-town festivals, parks, bars, churches, and nursing homes. A sometime actor and radio performer, he has long been committed to bringing poetry to non-traditional audiences. He has presented programs for civic organizations, professional groups (engineers, dentists, historians, librarians, nurses, Toastmasters clubs, corporate boards, religious societies, etc.), academic audiences, and school children, and has been a frequent guest at numerous science-fiction conventions, the Blue Cloud Literary Festival, the National Federation of State Poetry Societies' annual conference, the Great Plains Writers Conference, and events of the Rural America Arts Partnership. He is a member of Heartland Storytellers and the performance troupe Lady Poetesses from Hell (channeling the late Grace Lord Stoke). His awards include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Devins Award, and the Rhysling Award.

Author Bill Holm writes: "John Rezmerski believes that poetry lives inside the daily speech of ordinary people .... In the poet's hands, this language begins to glow with strangeness, beauty, gaiety, wit .... These poems want you. Go ahead. Read. Your life is about to get more interesting."

PUBLICATIONS

Counting Sheep (revised and enlarged edition), Bootless Publications, 2003, chapbook - $9.00
The Sheriff Next Day Answers the Reporter, Red Dragonfly Press, 2002, hand-printed broadside - $10.00
What Do I Know? New and Selected Poems, Holy Cow! Press, 2000 - $13.95
The Frederick Manfred Reader (ed.), Holy Cow! Press, 1996 - $21.95
Growing Down, Minnesota Writers Publishing House, 1982 - $3.00
Chin Music and Dirty Sermons, a live-to-tape radio program, with a troupe of actors and music by Michael Croswell, available from the author on cassette@ $10.00 or CD@ $15.00

All may be ordered from the author.

BOOKINGS

2008

POEM

Cherry Pop

A woman with white hair
and wrinkles like the grain of wood
gets on the bus with an old man
who has trouble lifting his legs up the steps.
They sit together, across from me,
holding hands. One of them, or both,
smells like cherry pop. I wonder.

Maybe it is some kind of medicine.
It seems too strong to be on their breath
after a stop at a snack bar.
Perhaps it is some kind of lotion.

I imagine them naked in bed,
rubbing each other with cherry pop,
bubbles lingering on
the parchment of his belly and
under the folds of her breasts.
I see the two of them splashing
in a tub of red suds, him yelling
"Catch the submarine!" while
she laughs and rolls over like an otter.
Some days, they might use
rootbeer or cream soda.
Other days, she has a headache
or his prostate bothers him,
and they do not speak to each other
all day long,
and they keep wanting the telephone to ring,
not even thinking who they want to call.

If it were not for cherry pop,
they might never go anywhere
might not think of anything at all,
much less that they would ever be lonely.

Visit

A peeled orange is like a world
my eyes fly around,
scanning gold mountains
and white rivers.
Who are its people,
and do they mine pulp
or drill for juice?
What is their gross national product?
I wonder if they know about
the seeds in their planet.

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