North of the Port: Stories [Hardcover]

Anthony Bukoski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 22, 2008

"These stories belong in the pantheon of American letters not just because they are models for the American short story, but also because they deal with the pressure of ordinary history on the lives of `DPs' (displaced persons)--Polish immigrants in the mid-twentieth century."--Cynthia Shearer, author of The Wonder Book of the Air

"Bukoski uncovers the most intimate religious and sensual longings, revealing with subtle grace and sly humor the hidden secrets of the displaced past that simmer through these multi-generational immigrant struggles and lyrical dreams. A remarkable book about where we come from and why we're here."--Douglas Unger, author of Leaving the Land

"Anthony Bukoski understands how people begin in one place and end up in another and in the process try to preserve or renew or reinvent their very sense of self. Especially in this era, when the issue of if or how or why one becomes an American is increasingly important, Bukoski's book is downright essential."--Robert Olen Butler

"Anthony Bukoski's characters are funny, devoted, passionate, quarrelsome, hard-working people. These stories will make you want to buy a round for your new friends from Superior, Wisconsin."--Alyson Hagy, author of Snow, Ashes

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this collection of 12 stories drawn from the experience of post-World War II Polish refugees in the U.S., Bukoski continues the themes and uses the style that characterizes previous work. Time is divided between the plight of displaced Polesin Plaquemine, Louisiana sugar cane plantations and their later settlement in Superior, Wisconsin. The Iwanowski family occupies most of the stories but family relations aren't consistent. Each story centers on some singular, resonating event, but its significance is usually obscured. A few pieces stand alone nicely: "A Walk Down Lonely Street," which focuses on a first sexual encounter, and "The Wand of Youth" that deals with the devastations of polio, are both moving. But the star of the collection is the consistent narrative voice that offers an obtuse style as he works through the tensions of generational conflict. Most of the stories never quite gel and seem to be more about style and craft than about memorable characters or situations.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The Poles of Superior, Wisconsin, live in the East End, southeast of where the big ships dock. North of the port is Lake Superior and, across it, Minnesota’s beautiful but desolate Arrowhead Country. When 17-year-old Catherine Kalinowski, whose story entitles Bukoski’s fine fifth collection, decides to follow her heart with the older Polish sailor her family has boarded since he jumped ship to escape communism, that is where they go. Not for long, nor happily, but still. The story would be merely pathetic if Bukoski didn’t love his characters and understand their limitations so well. Because of him, instead of looking like losers, Catherine, the peripatetic Iwanoskis, the stalwart Dziedzics, and the others—dockworkers, machinists, warehousemen, and their children—appear nobly exhausted by the generations-long effort to find or forge a new home worthy of mother Poland. They still—at least in the 1950s through 1970s settings of the stories—can hardly conceive of happiness apart from their Polishness. Bukoski’s heart-piercing, poetic fiction of place and ethnicity makes one wish to be Polish, too, despite the heartbreak. --Ray Olson

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Southern Methodist University Press (April 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870745212
• ISBN-13: 978-0870745218
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,815,441 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not regional fiction, but world-class, July 11, 2010

By 

Joseph Swanson "[e-mail]" (Milwaukee, WI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: North of the Port: Stories (Hardcover)

Many will think of this short story collection as regional fiction. In so-doing they will miss the intense constructions of its author. Bukoski, a product of the Iowa Writers Workshop, is not a regional writer. He is a man of much understanding of the delicate relationships between people to are new to one another, and the complications that go with these. You will meet some people that you could not have imagined existing, find their dreams told, and their frustrations found. Many would think of these as "small people". Too know how intense these folks are, is to find this: we need be better focused on those we live with. One could read this as a religious piece, as I choose to do. Others, can see it as an intensely-focused vision on how separately-developed come to know -- for a short period -- who they are, and might be. It would be good to conjoin my view with those of the others. JAS

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Polish-American stories, April 11, 2010

By 

Tom (Rochester, NY United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: North of the Port: Stories (Hardcover)

Anthony Bukoski's excellent short story collections are among the very finest examples of Polish American literature. In North of the Port the author once again takes the reader to the fading Polish neighborhood of Superior, Wisconsin where there's rust on the Dom Polski sign and fewer and fewer attend the masses at St. Adalbert's. These are stories about sad, lonely, working people who desperately cling to the headier days of yesteryear when the jukebox belted out polkas down at the crowded neighborhood tavern after the day shift.

Bukoski's other Polish-American short story collections are Children of Strangers, Polonaise, and Time Between Trains.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Regional and Universal, August 19, 2008

By 

Bruce Henricksen (America) - See all my reviews

This review is from: North of the Port: Stories (Hardcover)

Recently Northern Lights Books and Gifts of Duluth, MN threw a launch party for Anthony Bukoski's North of the Port, his fifth collection of short stories. With these books, lovingly depicting the joys and heartaches of the Polish community in Superior, Wisconsin, Tony has achieved a well-deserved national following. While his writing is rooted firmly in regional culture, his themes of love, loss, and endurance, evoked by way of the everyday, are universal.

At the launch party, he read a story called "The Wally Na Zdrowie Show." It is crafted as a personal letter in which the narrator, while trying to emphasize the good news, evokes the sadness of economic hardship in our region. Among other things, he contemplates selling the accordion handed down from his father. Without lapsing into sentimentality, Tony's sure touch uncovers the many losses and disappointments that cling like dust to instrument's yellowed keys. Another story, told by a regular at the Dirty Shame Saloon, ostensibly talks about the girls who visit the town's bars selling roses. As he speak, the narrator's own disappointed love emerges in prose as evocative as any poem.

Anthony Bukoski is the heir of Sherwood Anderson, whose Winesburg, Ohio more or less established the American standard for the story collection chronicling the life of a single town. Like many heirs, Tony surpasses his predecessor. North of the Port is published by Southern Methodist University Press.