Russell Thorburn weaves poetry, music, and memory in new collection and library event

Author, poet, musician, and longtime Marquette creative force Russell Thorburn stopped by the studio to discuss his latest poetry collection, "And the Heart Will Not Quicken," published by Cornerstone Press. The book serves as the centerpiece of an upcoming multimedia launch event at Peter White Public Library, set for Monday, October 27, at 6:30 p.m., appropriately timed with Dylan Thomas’s 111th birthday.

Thorburn’s work thrives on imaginative collisions; historical figures dropped into unexpected landscapes, poets wandering through retail stores, jazz icons haunting moments of modern crisis. He approaches poetry like a filmmaker or bandleader, staging scenes where Walt Whitman might stand waist-deep in Lake Superior or Miles Davis plays records during a Parisian night charged with tension. His influences span Whitman, Philip Levine, Federico García Lorca, William Everson, and a lineage of Detroit jazz and rock musicians, many of whom appear throughout the collection not as distant legends but as living presences.

Kurt Hauswirth

Place is fluid in Thorburn’s writing. He moves between the Upper Peninsula and Detroit, balancing hometown nostalgia with the rugged immediacy of Lake Superior. That tension drives his creativity, or the friction, as he describes it, between past and present, city and shoreline, jazz rhythms and natural silence.

"And the Heart Will Not Quicken" draws its title from a line by William Everson, launching what Thorburn hints may become a trilogy. Each book builds from lines by Everson, weaving them into sprawling narrative poems that blend personal history, American mythology, and spiritual reckoning.

Kurt Hauswirth spoke with Thorburn about his book and the upcoming library event:

Thorburn is rarely content to let poetry live only on the page. The launch event will feature live improvisation with saxophonist Patrick Booth and guitarist Dylan Trost, reprising a filmed series of five poems recorded earlier this year at NMU’s media studio. Thorburn sees these performances as collaborative jazz—part reading, part composition, with musical partners responding instinctively to tone and cadence.

Kurt Hauswirth

Whether guiding jazz solos, leading poetry from behind a Nord piano, or revisiting the soundtrack of his Detroit youth, Thorburn treats art as a living conversation. And on October 27, that conversation expands to include the audience.

Visit pwpl.info for more information.