Ep. 5: Liam Callanan

I'm so excited to be here.

It's really great to talk to you.

We begin every episode of this show by asking our guests to share a brief passage from someone else's writing, be it a novel, poem, essay, or article that, for them, evokes Wisconsin in some memorable way.

Uh, what did you choose, and can you read it for us?

First, I just wanna say I love this tradition.

I think every show that interviews authors should do this.

Uh, what I chose is a poem called "Silly Little City I Live and Love In" by my late colleague, Susan Fear, who's an absolute legend in Wisconsin, certainly in Milwaukee, a poet who's quite a force.

And so I'm just gonna share this poem, uh, which is on a plaque that we had engraved and hangs now at UWM.

"Silly Little City I Live and Love In".

"Silly little city with your harp streetlamps, blizzards, and vigil light stars, with your toot-toot streetlights, and 30-below wind chills, band shells and polkas, and steamy smoky lakes' pink waves, with your huge orange moons rising from the lake, with your huge red suns rising from the lake, with your sad jumpers falling into the lake, and your socialist watershed and Oriental Theater minarets, and Sunday morning Quaker meetings surrounded by church bells and taverns, with everyday George Washington walking down Wisconsin Avenue, with your ice fishing clinics and beard blessings, with your seven deadly sins parades, with your alewives parades and cladophora wings and streets named after sausages, Knock, with Francis Bacon's blue face on the side of your art museum and Joseph Cornell's Celestial Navigation by Birds, Gallery 18 inside your museum, with your statues of Goethe and Burns, Olmsted parks and bakery winds, silly little city that erases me, I keep fastening your lake winds to the page."

Hmm.

That's lovely.

You know, you said you like this tradition.

I am increasingly loving this tradition because I get to hear poems like Susan's.

What stands out to you about that piece? What made you choose it?

Everything about it.

I love all the inventory and details, and it's a, it's a snapshot in time.

We don't still have the circus parades or some of the parades that she mentions, but otherwise, all those things, the wind chills, the band shells, the polkas, the pink waves, uh, the art museum, the statues of Goethe and Burns, the Olmsted parks, I live near one.

Uh, I love it.

I was born in Washington, DC.

I grew up in Los Angeles, so I'm the first Callanan to live in Central Time for quite some time, and so I'm a Milwaukee expatriate, I guess you could say.

And so what I love about this poem is it captures the fun and all the detail of the city, which I've come to love, in such an evocative way.

way.Yeah.

I'm so excited to be here.

It's really great to talk to you.

We begin every episode of this show by asking our guests to share a brief passage from someone else's writing, be it a novel, poem, essay, or article that, for them, evokes Wisconsin in some memorable way.

Uh, what did you choose, and can you read it for us?

First, I just wanna say I love this tradition.

I think every show that interviews authors should do this.

Uh, what I chose is a poem called "Silly Little City I Live and Love In" by my late colleague, Susan Fear, who's an absolute legend in Wisconsin, certainly in Milwaukee, a poet who's quite a force.

And so I'm just gonna share this poem, uh, which is on a plaque that we had engraved and hangs now at UWM.

"Silly Little City I Live and Love In".

"Silly little city with your harp streetlamps, blizzards, and vigil light stars, with your toot-toot streetlights, and 30-below wind chills, band shells and polkas, and steamy smoky lakes' pink waves, with your huge orange moons rising from the lake, with your huge red suns rising from the lake, with your sad jumpers falling into the lake, and your socialist watershed and Oriental Theater minarets, and Sunday morning Quaker meetings surrounded by church bells and taverns, with everyday George Washington walking down Wisconsin Avenue, with your ice fishing clinics and beard blessings, with your seven deadly sins parades, with your alewives parades and cladophora wings and streets named after sausages, Knock, with Francis Bacon's blue face on the side of your art museum and Joseph Cornell's Celestial Navigation by Birds, Gallery 18 inside your museum, with your statues of Goethe and Burns, Olmsted parks and bakery winds, silly little city that erases me, I keep fastening your lake winds to the page."

Hmm.

That's lovely.

You know, you said you like this tradition.

I am increasingly loving this tradition because I get to hear poems like Susan's.

What stands out to you about that piece? What made you choose it?

Everything about it.

I love all the inventory and details, and it's a, it's a snapshot in time.

We don't still have the circus parades or some of the parades that she mentions, but otherwise, all those things, the wind chills, the band shells, the polkas, the pink waves, uh, the art museum, the statues of Goethe and Burns, the Olmsted parks, I live near one.

Uh, I love it.

I was born in Washington, DC.

I grew up in Los Angeles, so I'm the first Callanan to live in Central Time for quite some time, and so I'm a Milwaukee expatriate, I guess you could say.

And so what I love about this poem is it captures the fun and all the detail of the city, which I've come to love, in such an evocative way.

way.Yeah.