Cover of the book “Milwaukee Does Strange Things To People NEW & SELECTED POEMS 1979-2007” by SUSAN FIRER
Milwaukee Does Strange Things to People at the once Mr. Nude America, the now-deceased Dick Bacon, who sunbathed all 40 below winter along the lake in a circle of aluminum reflectors. Listen to Sigmund Snopek's take on Milwaukee: "Thank God it isn't Cleveland." Maybe it's the off lake June smell of alewives, or too many blue-flaming cocktails & kielbasas, kringles & flowering onions, church festivals, ethnic festivals, fireworks, spaetzles & always ships moving across the horizon. Maybe it's stone-horse mounted Kosciusko at the ready for any drive-through fish fry or Saint Josaphat Basilica's copper dome marking the horizon. (The Polish Moon helps everyone locate themselves.) Maybe it's too many calls to the city's January pothole hotline or the way William Ho's gold foo dogs guard his Chinese New Year Hong-Kong Dim Sum sign. Maybe it's the Great Halo above Canfora Bakery on nights they bake paczkis for Fat Tuesday. Maybe it's the way Germans in lederhosen & dirndis gather in August at Maier Festival Park to cook 60-foot-long bratwursts. Maybe it's the way the Coast Guard puts all its surrealsized bouys tippy on their sides kitty korner from the Port of Milwaukee. (While at the Port of Milwaukee, I have to mention how crazy the whole smelt-fishing crowd has gotten. Completely 65|
Out of Control! Since shore fishing was made illegal everyone's gone nuts. It used to be so lovely to walk around the shore fires and watch the fishers raising and lowering their nets in firelights, watch them bite the heads off their first live catches. Now they fish off Jones Island, bring tents, & TVs, & Smoky Joe grills, loud music-sometimes do you also question progress?) In Milwaukee, as many people die of poems as drive-by shootings. Famous people visit and remark on the girth of the residents. The largest girdle ever sold was sold in Milwaukee. Look, you don't want me to get all sentimental and lie to you, do you? I mean I don't think I'd want to be Mayor of this place. (You'd always have to eat too many fried foods at festivals and sing German & Polish songs. People would expect you to solve all their problems: baseball stadiums, graffiti, crime, which German restaurant to take visiting dignitaries to.) But I do want you to know this city is nicer than you could imagine, even if Money magazine once rated it 177th in the nation. Picture this: driving along the lake cargo ships in the distance, too many sailboats to count, their sails collecting God & sun, playing the hometown's own Sammy Llanas singing Patsy Cline's "Walkin' After Midnight," which quite a few Milwaukeeans could tell you is on the same BoDeans' CD with other local favorites like "Good Things," like "Paradise." 66
RIP to Milwaukee’s former poet laureate Susan Firer
rereading her tonight & have to share her poem she used as the title of her collection: “Milwaukee Does Strange Things to People”
to all who knew her: may her memory be a blessing
