Freeway to the Inner Life

A reprise and update of a lecture on the poet and writer, Archibald MacLeish, that makes the case through the history of poetry, painting and music, that art is the pathway to the inner life we all know we have had since before we were born; and will have possibly after we die. The room rings with the stories of poets, artists, musicians who show us the richness of the embodied inner life.

After a career in academia, marketing communications and journalism on the editorial board of the StarTribune, where he won several Page One awards for excellence, Jim Lenfestey has published thirteen volumes of poems, essays, anthologies and a memoir. For fifteen years he chaired the Literary Witnesses poetry program at Plymouth and led a summer poetry class on Mackinac Island, Michigan. In 2020 he received the Kay Sexton Award for significant contributions and leadership in the Minnesota Literary Community.  In 2024, Milkweed Editions will publish his poetry collection, Body Odes, Praise Songs and Other Oddities and Amazements. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, the political activist, Susan Lenfestey. They have four children and eight grandchildren.