The Mirrormaker: Poems [Paperback]

InThe Mirrormaker, songwriter and poet Brian Laidlaw melds myths ancient and contemporary among the raspberries, wolves, and taconite mines of Minnesotas Iron Range.

A companion volume to Laidlaws 2015 project,The Stuntman, this collection fuses the stories of two fabled couples: the mythical Narcissus and Echo, and Bob Dylan and Echo Star Helstrom, subject of the song Girl from the North Country. But whereThe Stuntmanfocused on Narcissus,The Mirrormakertakes its primary inspiration from Echo, drawing on ecocritical readings of American history and interrogating the masculine logic of resource extraction.

In these poems, Laidlaw explores themes of history and celebrity, love and longing, myth and meaning, in a landscape both ravaged and redemptive. He pits romantic obsession against self-obsessionThe first time I saw the moon / I thought it was my ideaand asks whether a meaningful distinction can ever be drawn between the two. These themes are explored further in a companion song suite, written by Laidlaw and recorded with a longtime collaborator from the Iron Range, that accompanies this book via download.

Sharp, searching, and ecstatically musical,The Mirrormakeris a genre-expanding exploration of boom and bustin mining economies and in young love.Contents

I.

Echos Ailments
Hatches
Iron Ironworker
Twin Brothers Drowning in a Flooded Ore Pit
Landlocked Leave
The Sparrows
Medicine Cabinet Inventory
The Dinosaurs
Echos Impressions
Upstate Mothers
Playtime Empire
The Golden Rule of Copyright
Dark Sides

II.
Echos Theory
Holster, Upholster
Dead Pony Recapitulation
Fractal
Chevron
They Found a Wolf
Echos Prom
No Anemics
Anechoic

III.
Echos Diagnosis
Returning to the Sycamore
Blood Orange
Blood Orange
Echos Prognosis
Assumption Hall
Prelude
Song
[I will make a spacel#C