Once Upon a Neighborhood

Evelyn Klein has rooted her poems and stories in the landscape of the Midwestern neighborhoods she's lived in. You can feel the north winds whipping through her yard in winter and the moist heat and mosquito buzz of her Minnesota summers. An exquisite chronicle of life." —Kimberly Nightingale, Publisher/ Editor, Saint Paul Almanac "These poems give us a lovely detailed trajectory of a woman's life complete with all its bumps and beauty." —Carol Connolly, Saint Paul Poet Laureate, Author of Payments Due "Evelyn Klein has written an inviting collection of poems and prose reflections about the neighborhoods we live in the Twin Cities. Her perspectives are multiple of ways the Mississippi River shapes our lives... Strolling through the many parks for which the Twin Cities is celebrated, Klein has an attentive eye to heron, finches, and gulls. Her perspectives include that of a young mother, her parents and children. She reflects, as Americans, we move, reinventing ourselves, creating a climate within a climate, with new jobs, new families, new groups sharing a common interest. She celebrates America as a land of immigrants... The collection embodies our powers of responding to change and to the comparative permanence of land and water, parks, and gardens, rivers and lakes. Klein captures the atmosphere of our region." —Dr. Margaret Odegard, Professor Emeritus University of Wisconsin, River Falls Readers who wander into Evelyn Klein's neighborhood will find a warm welcome. This Twin Cities documentary punctuated by poetic insights invites readers as extended family: "with a poem rising above the sunset." The neighborhood includes a rich mix of people, Battle Creek Park, train whistles, smartweed, day flower, seasons, blue heron, rivers, rush hour and geese that "clear the pond." Enjoy the visit, the discovery of burning sumac, prickly ash and maple, and the people who "shuffle the world/in their cards/ as if they held/ both/ past and future/ in their hands." Be awestruck as "the moon casts its halo above shredded clouds." And then, when "the wide-eyed moon/ faces/ the golden-haloed sun/ slipping/ behind rooftops/ pulling night/ sky between them," you will come away from Klein's neighborhood inspired by sincerity and the wisdom of a life well led. —Linda Back McKay, Author of Shadow Mothers: Stories of Adoption and Reunion and The Cockeyed Precision of Time