Norse Penny?

So where does the name of the blog come from? Well, despite your best guess, it is not my tribute to a former Nordic girlfriend. I never dated a Viking named Penny. (I did date an Idaho girl named Penny but that was a long time ago and she eventually had her name legally changed to Lauren anyway so it's a moot point.)

Anyway, the Norse penny I'm referring to is also known as the Maine penny. In 1957, archeologists excavating a former Native American settlement near Brooklin, Maine unexpectedly found a small, silver Viking coin among all the Indian artifacts. The coin, they figured, was probably minted between 1065 and 1080 A.D. and long predated the village they were excavating. These days, more level-headed scientists and researchers have simply decided that the penny being in Maine is the result of an extensive trading network that stretched far to the north. But back then, there was all this excitement and speculation that it meant that Vikings had actually settled parts of what is now the continental U.S. and that the Native Americans might have founded their village on the ruins of a Norse town. That idea persisted for years until it was eventually discredited.

What any of this has to do with me is this: I heard about the Maine penny years ago and loved the idea, loved the hint of something ancient and mysterious resting just below the surface of the obvious. I loved the idea that I could be staring at something common and ordinary and simultaneously looking at something momentous. Will Peterson's poems from his book Luctare Pro Passione did the same thing for me -- he made Pocatello, Idaho (a much reviled and under -appreciated place) exciting and (dare I use the cheesy term?) magical. He imagined the area's ancient history when it was all under Lake Bonneville and whales swam above the city's red foothills. There was one poem in the book about a hiking trail above the city littered with lucky horseshoes. It was like a Western Shangri-la or something. I feel as though I'm not doing the poems or the idea an justice but suffice it to say, I love thinking that there is something magic or mysterious surrounding us in our daily, common existence.

Later, when I was in grad school and publishing my own chapbooks of poetry for friends, I wanted to come up with a name for my ultra-small press that meant something to me, that wasn't just some corny play on the word "press" (you know, like the Bench Press, Hard Press, Permanent Press, etc.), and that reflected my sensibilities when it came to poetry. I flirted briefly with Red Planet Press because I designed a killer logo (I thought) and because my name, Mark, originates with Mars, the Roman god of war. But then that idea went away and Norse Penny Press came around.

I think the first book I published under that name was Inamorata, a collection of poems about former girlfriends that still haunted me at me at the time. When I produced ten or twelve handmade copies of my Master's thesis, The Book of Saint Anthony, it had the little, scanned and altered image of a Norse penny on the back cover. I felt so official. Since then I've produced another three or four books under the imprint and I'm looking forward to doing more at some point (like when I start writing poetry again, whenever that will be.)

So the blog name comes from the press name which comes from a tiny chip of metal found in America 50 years ago that turns out to be a coin struck in ancient country over 900 years ago. Make sense?