Catherine Jagoe
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  • Poems
    • Bloodroot >
      • Dislocations
      • Passport
      • Burial Ground
    • News from the North >
      • Arctica Islandica
      • In the Heartland
      • Dog on the Median of the Kennedy Expressway, Chicago
    • Casting Off >
      • Man in a Parking Lot
      • This State
      • On Speaking French After Twenty Years
    • Performances
    • Recent Poems
  • Essays
    • Finding the Springs
    • Voracious
    • Losing North
    • On the Van Galder Bus
    • Homecoming Stew
    • Manhandled
    • Fossils
    • Black Walnut
    • The Ambassador and the Assassin
    • Vanishing Acts
    • Things That Matter
    • A Ring of Bells
    • Kitchen Table c. 1970
    • Moving
    • Language Lessons
    • Cycling Home
    • Eight Belles
    • Selfishness
    • Learning to Ski Skate
  • Audio & Video
    • Watching the Chimney Swifts at Dusk (audio)
    • Road Trips (audio)
    • Mud Season (audio)
    • Swimming (audio)
    • Driving to Door County (audio)
    • Dandelions (audio)
    • Wisconsin Food (audio)
    • Fall (audio)
    • Woodcocks (audio)
    • Biking (audio)
    • The Music of Words (video)
  • Translations
    • Poetry Translations
    • Voice & Shadow
    • Reborn in Ink
    • My Name is Light
    • That Bringas Woman
  • Criticism
    • Ambiguous Angels
    • La mujer en los discursos de género
  • Contact
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Road Trips
July 1, 2016 on Wisconsin Life, WPR

Mud Season
March 18, 2016 on Wisconsin Life, WPR


Swimming
Wisconsin Public Radio, July 26, 2013

Driving to Door County
Wisconsin Public Radio, May 22, 2013


Dandelions
Wisconsin Public Radio, April 10, 2013


Wisconsin Food 
Wisconsin Trails, May/June 2012
Wisconsin Pubic Radio March 14, 2012


Fall
Wisconsin Public Radio, October 21, 2011

Wisconsin’s Woodcocks 
Wisconsin Public Radio, June 1, 2011


Biking
Wisconsin Public Radio, May 4, 2011

Swimming

Aired on Wisconsin Public Radio's Wisconsin Life, July 26, 2013. Click here to listen to the piece.
Swimming is something I’ve done my whole life. There is a photo 
of me at age one by a pool in W. Africa, alight with happiness. I inherited an aquatic gene from my mother, an irresistible urge not just to get into water whenever it presents itself but to travel through it, to go somewhere. When I’m some place new, exploring its waterscape is an essential part of getting to know my surroundings.

When I first moved to Madison I lived by a small lake, and that 
summer I swam across it every day. I loved striking out for the opposite shore under my own steam, and, once out in the middle, I loved seeing the Capitol from the water’s surface, like an otter. But to get there I had to overcome a certain amount of fear. The water was murky, and there was thick weed around the edges. There is something primeval about the fear of the deep that arises when you 
can’t see below you. I was sometimes seized by images of being ambushed by a shark-sized muskie, or dragged down by some malevolent lake plant. I had to tell myself that what I was doing was just as innocuous as walking through long grass. It helped that swimming is meditative—it focuses so much on breath, rhythm, and flow that you have plenty of time to confront things in your own 
head and let them go.

 One fall I visited Whitefish Bay in Door County in September. It 
was Indian summer and the weather was glorious: a cornflower-blue sky, searing white sands, and shallow, turquoise water. So of course I went swimming. Every morning during my stay, I swam down the shore to the point and back. It is worth braving the early morning 
cold to get the calmer water, because as the sun rises higher the wind freshens and whips up waves.  Also there is no danger of being accidentally decapitated by a speeding Skiddoo.
 
There’s a moment of agony plunging in, then a few moments into 
the swim the exertion of front crawl warms me up. I’m suffused with euphoria. The water feels like a silken sleeve. The swells seem to go through my body and not just below it. Lake Michigan might look dark and opaque from a distance, but underneath is another world—there is a diffuse, greenish-golden radiance, a clarity, shafted with sunrays.  Bright particles are suspended in the water like dust motes in the air when the sun is at a certain angle. The surface below is rippled sand, with hardly a stone or shell or plant to be seen. After about twenty minutes the chill sets in: the air with each upstroke feels warmer than the water. Again and again I plunge my hands into dark fire, speeding up to get back to the cottage and a hot shower.

A quarter-mile later I emerge, dripping and exhilarated, chilled 
to the bone, ready to do it all over again.
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