Böcker av Loren Niemi

Little does Doctor Buzz know when he signs on as the Ringmaster and tour manager for the one-ring Rex Terrestrial, Celestial & Nautical Circus that he will not only be taking a ragtag collection of misfits on a six-month trip from the headwaters of the Mississippi to New Orleans, but that he will be dealing with alcoholic camels, broken down boats, too many or not enough cooks, and his own existential crisis of confidence. That and a chance to find the love of his life if he can just choose the right woman. Loosely based on the author's lived experience, this is not a memoir gone off the rails in which facts stand in awe of a good story, but an engaging fiction replete with poetic imagery, carny come-ons and offbeat humor.

What is prayer if not the acknowledgement of one's relationship to the Divine? What is poetry if not a kind of prayer that rises from the heart in image and metaphor? What is this book if not the poems offered up as testimony to the author's relationship to the Divine? From his entry into the religious life in 1965 to the 2020's pandemic pause, these are intimate prayers, images of life lived in times of transition, and metaphors of how one understands what it means to be human.

Loren Niemi's work has been called post-modern, "with the dark beauty of language that is not ashamed of poetry," according to Kate Lutz."What Haunts Us" is a collection of fifteen short stories that speak from the page in the voice of the storyteller - at turns comical, unsettling, heartbreaking and wondrous - evoking the full range of human behavior and emotion. From tales set in the northern Minnesota Boundary Waters, to the millennia-spanning landscapes of Europe and the United States, these are stories brimming with a dynamic sense of place and person, imbued with a sense of grounded reality.