Above: Keith Jentoft, a self-portrait. Keith illustrated Hungry Jack Memories.
Penning a book of poetry isn’t easy, as Keith Jentoft can attest.
“There is a lot of struggle to find the right word, to keep the rhyme and the meter, to take memories and write about them in a meaningful way. In a way that I hope has meaning to someone more than just to me. Writing poems can be difficult,” he said from his cabin on Hungry Jack Lake.
Jentoft spent much of last winter gathering his experiences on paper and winnowing away the fat from the fallow, keeping the richness of a moment or day and molding those memories into a few words.
In the end he came up with a warm tome filled with his watercolor paintings that often tell as much as the poems they illustrate.
“I wrote the book to share my experiences mostly with my kids. They have spent a lot of time at the cabin,” he said.
Today Leif, age 30, and Stefan, age 26, live in Boston and his daughter Karin, age 27, lives in Zurich, Switzerland. Although they live far away, they still return to the cabin whenever they get the chance, said Jentoft.
There are 18 poems and an equal number of illustrations in these pages. He writes about the lake, his children, the Ham Lake fire, beavers and loons, mosquitos and Honey Moon Bluff. And one great piece about fishing. “I don’t have much about fishing in the book because mostly when I come to the cabin I work, cutting trees, plumbing, fixing docks, mowing grass… There’s not much time for fishing. If you don’t like to work, don’t own a cabin,” he said with a laugh.
The first stanza of the poem titled Fishing Stories bends and blends language with the rhythm of a fish on the line:
“With my father-in-law,
one morning on Birch
In aluminum pews
in our wilderness church,
On our pilgrimage blest
and mission devout
We traveled and prayed
for magnificent trout.”
When asked what inspired him to write this book, he said he had been reading, “an old copy of songs from 1943, one song was about Saganaga and Seagull Lake, and I started to think about all of things that I have experienced here on the Trail.”
Jentoft has spent his career bringing French technology to America. He works in insurance and data security, and has written technical manuals, which is about as opposite from writing poetry as one can get. “I don’t work as much as I used to, but I’m still working in the field,” he said.
“I enjoyed the challenge. I didn’t write this book to make money. In fact, I have been paddling around Hungry Jack Lake and giving copies to my neighbors. So far I haven’t heard much back, but I hope they like it.”
Keith’s book, Hungry Jack Memories, can be purchased at Birchbark Books. If you like poetry and the Gunflint Trail, it’s a book you will enjoy.
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