In <i>The Mirrormaker</i>, songwriter and poet Brian Laidlaw melds myths ancient and contemporary among the raspberries, wolves, and taconite mines of Minnesota’s Iron Range.<br><br> A companion volume to Laidlaw’s 2015 project, <i>The Stuntman</i>, 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 where <i>The...
"THE EARTH BROKE OPEN CAUSE WE BROKE IT OPEN," blares the first line of this enrapturing debut collection mapping the myth of Narcissus and Echo and the Iron Range roots of Bob Dylan onto a world growing increasingly self-obsessed. Against the backdrop of the mining town of Hibbing, Minnesota, Brian Laidlaw examines the ways narcissism has flooded culture. Much like a “hawk has a horizontal sweet spot on its retina / for spotting prey on the prairie,” the speaker of these...
