Monthly Archives: April 2022

April 16, 2022: Spotlight on Wendell Berry and His Poem “The Sycamore”; Background for My Poem “Fun Fact”

Posted on by

Poet, essayist, and environmentalist Wendell Berry has long been acknowledged as an artist as well as a seminal thinker in reimagining human interactions with the lands we all depend upon. His poem, “The Sycamore,” is not one with which I was acquainted until after I finished writing my own this morning. I find them in harmony with each other.

Sycamore, UW-Madison Arboretum, June 2018 (Photos: Leslie Schultz)

Background for My Poem “Fun Fact”:

Today’s poem caused me to return (via the internet) to Winterthur, which I explored early this month to refresh my memory about the plantings there. I kept recalling a short and charming video made by the horticulturalists and an arborist on staff there called “The Top 10 Trees at Winterthur.” In particular, I was mulling about tree #2, the Sycamore.

When I lived in Lake Charles, Louisiana, there was a very tall sycamore in the back garden of the house I rented. It offered welcome shade. I loved to look at its bark. Sometimes long peelings of bark would drop on the tin roof of the porch with a melodic crash, rather like windchimes. The only sycamore I have seen in the Midwest is in the Arboretum on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I think the harsher climate of Minnesota they would not survive long here.

What really made me think about sycamores in general, and about the denizen of Winterthur, is that way that careful shoring up of its innate tendency to hollow out in maturity is thought to have extended its life. The shoring up (concrete and metal rods) does not show from the outside, and the tree appears healthy and stable. Is there a cost to the tree for this intervention? I cannot know, only wonder.

Here are a few more fun facts about sycamores:

Sycamores are sometimes called plane trees, buttonwood trees, or water beech.

An American sycamore tree can often be easily distinguished from other trees by its mottled bark which flakes off in large irregular masses, leaving the surface mottled and gray, greenish-white and brown. The bark of all trees has to yield to a growing trunk by stretching, splitting, or infilling. The sycamore shows the process more openly than many other trees. The explanation is found in the rigid texture of the bark tissue which lacks the elasticity of the bark of some other trees, so it is incapable of stretching to accommodate the growth of the wood underneath, so the tree sloughs it off

The trunks of large trees are often hollow.

The sycamore tree is the largest deciduous trees in the Eastern United States. It grows to 30 meters tall and lives nearly 600 years.

Etymology: Middle English: from Old French sic(h)amor, via Latin from Greek sukomoros, from sukon ‘fig’ + moron ‘mulberry’.

Happy Reading! Happy Writing! LESLIE

April 15, 2022: Spotlight on Robert Frost’s Poem “Acquainted with the Night”; Background on My Poem “A Fugue of Dark Questions”

Posted on by
Full Moon from My East Window (Photo: Leslie Schultz)

Acquainted with the Night

by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. 
I have been one acquainted with the night.

I think that this poem reads well on the page, but when read aloud it leaps up in a mesmerizing and terrifying shadow play. Frost’s terza rima exploration of uncertainty and spiritual ennui is one that I read aloud so often it has memorized itself in me. It reminds me of the haunting surrealist paintings of Giorgio Di Chirico, especially his “The Nostalgia of the Infinite” (1911-1913, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.)

For me, Frost’s poems have a dark, brooding, incantatory beauty that casts a spell on the hearer or reader. Certainly he was an ambitious man–ambitious in the artistic and worldly senses, both. For these reasons, he seems a fitting pairing with the Shakespearean landscape that cropped up in the poem I wrote today.

Nick Thomas: A handy primer on Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'

Background on My Poem “A Fugue of Dark Questions”:

Yesterday, Tim, Julia, and I were recalling our first college-visit trip. I hadn’t known that Julia enjoyed the tiny and uncomfortable cabin we stayed in on the shore of Lake Erie after our visit to Oberlin and its Conservatory, or that she loved watching that evening, for the first time, reruns of the old television comedy, “Gilligan’s Island,” on a tiny black and white set.

Then, last evening, I read in the latest issue of Vogue magazine about the new production of Shakespeare’s tragic play, Macbeth, starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga that opens in New York City this evening. And I remembered the ambitious fun of reading Macbeth as a family, as a kind of weird trio invoking the Bard’s vistas as we traveled the Midwest. This poem is thinking about that memory, and ideas of ambition and double-edged awareness, as in the word, “fugue,” which has applications in both classical music and abnormal psychology.

Daniel Craig, Ruth Negga to Star in 'Macbeth' on Broadway – The Hollywood Reporter
Gilligan's Island - Wikipedia

Happy reading! Happy writing! LESLIE

April 14, 2022: Spotlight on Poet Ron Padgett and His Collection, HOW TO BE PERFECT; Background on My Poem, “Sunshine”

Posted on by

Ron Padgett‘s book of poems, How to Be Perfect, (Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2008) has a permanent place on my shelf. I am far from perfect, and so I do not have any of his other celebrated works, though I am curious about them, especially his collaboration with artist Jason Novak, published by Coffee House Press in 2016, called How to Be Perfect: An Illustrated Guide, and Oklahoma Tough: My Father, King of the Tulsa Bootleggers (University of Oklahoma, 2003).

The pleasures of How to Be Perfect, as ironic a title as Johnathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” are many. Consider the titles of such short works as “Very Post-Impressionism” and “Charlie Chan Wins Again” and “Whiz Bang” and “Rinso.” If you are like me, you immediately want to turn from the table of contents and dive into the poem itself. Many of the longer works, including “The Absolutely Huge and Incredible Injustice in the World” are witty and arresting and deadly serious protests all at once, works that question the ability of humans to wake up and save themselves and the planet. Yet Padgett never gives in to ease despair, and the verbose advice dropping of Polonius. Indeed, the title poem, a litany of short bits of advice strung across several pages, is laugh-out-loud funny in many places and filled with condensed, luminous wisdom in others. Consider this item:

Don't stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don't
forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at end's length
and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass
ball collection.

If you are looking for something thoughtful, polished, angry at human stupidity but still hopeful and humane, consider reading these poems.

Background on My Poem “Sunshine”:

Today’s poem is about grim news, raw grey weather, and glimmers of hope, and was inspired by these solar arrays outside of Northfield.

Happy Reading! Happy Writing! LESLIE

April 13, 2022: Spotlight on the Art of Karla Schultz; Background on My Poem “Stalking Beauty”

Posted on by

Today is the birthday of my sister, Karla, an inspired photographer of the natural and built worlds. Above are just a few of the images she has made into cards and sent to me over the last few months. She graciously allowed me to share them with you today, and it makes me very happy to do so.

My poem for today, “Stalking Beauty,” draws its inspiration not only from Karla’s generous spirit and her luminous art but from these specific images. Happy Birthday, Karla! And thank you for helping me to see more clearly the beauty and love all around me.

Happy Reading! Happy Writing! LESLIE

April 12, 2022: Spotlight on THE ART OF DROWNING by Poet Billy Collins; Background on My Poem “Stormy Weather”

Posted on by

There are few who don’t already know and enjoy this volume of Billy Collins, his fifth collection, The Art of Drowning (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995). It has held an extra-special place in my own heart since 2015. Back then, Tim, Julia, and I had made plans to travel by Amtrak to Amherst for some east coast college visits, to visit friends, and (for me) to fulfill a long-held ambition to visit the home of Emily Dickinson. Well, we had to cancel those plans abruptly for reasons beyond our control. It was the rational decision, but it was a body blow nonetheless.

What consoled me then was rereading (by chance, so it seemed–hmmm, I wonder?) Collins poem, “Consolation,” the first in this collection. The poem is humorous, filled with sonorous sour grapes. It made me laugh. And then it sparked an homage poem, also called “Consolation,” by me about the aforementioned college visit trip’s cancellation. And today, these memories tie in to the topic of my poem for today (see below).

The whole volume repays reading and rereading. Collins humor with an edge remains keen for me, even instructive, even as I see my own copy is losing its pages, falling apart at the seams. No doubt Collins would find a metaphor it that!

Background on My Poem for April 12, “Stormy Weather”:

Weathervane, Minnesota Museum of Marine Art (Photograph by Leslie Schultz)

Regrettably, today’s slender lyric is a slice of life rather than a large-scale metaphor. Tim and I had planned to attend the workshop with poet Melissa Range, scheduled for this evening at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse in Winona, Minnesota. Hazardous weather alert for the whole of the region (accurately accounted for in the poem!) made us reluctantly decide not to risk the two-hundred mile round trip. (Maybe April is the cruelest month, after all? After all my rhymed and metered protest in the sonnet “April Exhilaration: In Praise of Northfield, In Response to T.S. Eliot”? Perish the thought!)

Train Car Graffiti Sums Up My Disappointment Over Cancelled Travel (Photo: Leslie Schultz)

Happy Reading! Happy Writing! Stay Safe and Dry! LESLIE