{"id":8764,"date":"2025-07-01T18:39:30","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T18:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=8764"},"modified":"2025-07-01T18:43:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T18:43:18","slug":"how-lonely-the-dead-must-be-a-poem-by-peter-mladinic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/how-lonely-the-dead-must-be-a-poem-by-peter-mladinic\/","title":{"rendered":"How Lonely the Dead Must Be. A Poem by Peter Mladinic"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Lonely the Dead Must Be<\/strong><\/p>\n

The last line of James Wright\u2019s poem
\n\u201cI Am a Sioux Brave, He Said in Minneapolis\u201d
\nwoke me up this morning.
\nI sat on the edge of my bed in the dark,
\nwondering if he finished that poem
\nin that city, where I lived,
\nin a big white white house on a corner.<\/p>\n

One winter night, having left a library,
\nwalking in the enclosure of a bridge
\nover the Mississippi, from the West Bank
\nto the East, I met Harold Stetson,
\nan indigenous person, with whom I shared
\na jug of wine, on a stone bench
\noutside the enclosure, a jug
\nthat, as it passed between us, fell
\nand splintered on the stone ground. <\/p>\n

His brother had recently been clubbed
\nto death by cops on the West Bank\u2019s
\nSeven Corners, he said, on the stone bench.
\nOn the East Bank, we sat across a table
\nin Dinkytown\u2019s Valli Pizza. Then
\nup in my room, he slept with his dark coat
\nas a blanket in the easy chair
\nby the window. The next morning <\/p>\n

my roommate, Bill Smith and I, in Bill\u2019s
\ncar, watched him walk up a few steps
\nand through a door into a house
\nin South Minneapolis. I only saw Harold
\nonce after that, with a few books
\nin his arms, going into Sandy\u2019s,
\na coffee shop, as I was going out.<\/p>\n

It was on University Avenue,
\nacross from the campus. It probably
\nwasn\u2019t there when James Wright
\nwas in Minneapolis. Harold and I
\nexchanged a few words.
\nBut that night on the bridge, only he
\nand I were in the enclosure, then
\non the bench, the jug
\na bridge between his world and mine.<\/p>\n

 
\n\"\"<\/a>
\n 
\nPeter Mladinic<\/strong> has published three books of poems: Lost in Lea, Dressed for Winter<\/em>, and Falling Awake in Lovington<\/em>, all with the Lea County Museum Press. His fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table <\/em>is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications. His most recent book of poems, Maiden Rock, is available from UnCollected Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.<\/p>\n

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How Lonely the Dead Must Be The last line of James Wright\u2019s poem \u201cI Am a Sioux Brave, He Said in Minneapolis\u201d woke me up this morning. I sat on the edge of my bed in the dark, wondering if he finished that poem in that city, where I lived, in a big white white … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[808,950,796,366,401,43],"tags":[18,136,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8764"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8767,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8764\/revisions\/8767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}