A big thank-you to Tyler Gardner of the Northfield Public Library for constructing this banner, and to Raymonde Noer for my author photo!
One of the best things about having other poets as friends is that when they publish books filled with thoughtful, insightful, musical poems you can be delighted for them. I met Scott Lowery many years ago in his then-home city of Winona. It was the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Competition that brought us together. We both have had winning entries. Scott’s work–whether in traditional forms, like sonnets, or in more organic shapes–is truly stand-out. I am delighted that he arranged for a reading to showcase Mutual Life (Finishing Line Press, 2023) here in Northfield so that you can meet him, too.
Scott’s work is topical yet timeless. Each of the twenty-three poems in his new collection shimmers with specific observation and language that manages to be at once flinty, spare, and distilled, yet also lush, filled with melody, and extravagantly memorable. Taken together, these poems ponder how humans struggle through turbulent times, awash with keen (but often unarticulated) hungers for individual relevance and connection. This collection invites us to broaden our humanity, to look up and out, as well as deep within.
In addition to a selection of poems from Mutual Life, Scott will also share some of the poems in his award-winning collection, Empty-Handed, originally published in 2013 and recently reissued by its publisher, Northfield’s own Red Dragonfly Press. In fact, Scott’s idea is to make the event a little more “Northfield.” Scott and I realized that our work shares some key themes, including hometown life, a Minnesota sense of place, inspiration from the art of others, climate anxieity, and the lessons gained from family. When he asked me to share the podium for this event, we saw an opportunity for a reading in which our poems might have a kind of conversation with each other. It will be an experiment for us, and it is one I am looking forward to!
I hope that you can join us on Tuesday, May 7 to meet Scott and hear him read his wonderful poems. LESLIE
Many thanks to those readers who took the time to wrestle with my question about whose (fictional) poetic voice shone through the hatchling poems for fictive characters that I shared on April 6. I truly appreciate your help–you know who you are!
It helped me to get your thoughtful responses. One such response, from a very accomplished writer of fiction, I will share here, since she shared it publically in the Comments Field:
“The age of a poet is always young. The place from which a poet creates can exist in all ages. I can’t discern the work of an elderly artist of any genre except maybe in skill and sophistication, both of which I see and read here. I wouldn’t have said “This is Leslie Schultz’s work” if you hadn’t told me it was, but knowing, I recognize your mind and heart and intellect in the compact poems packed with internal rhyme and evocative imagery. Which isn’t to say you can’t/didn’t write in other voices. If we can create characters, we can think and write and feel in their experiences, however close to or foreign from our own (if anything is).” Jan Newman
As to the fictive authorship of the six shared poems?
Older Poet?Younger Poet?
“Study of Cloud Rapture from the Shore” Older Poet
“Jenny Stubtoe” Younger Poet
“Candlelight at Point Reyes” Older Poet
“My First Shasta Soda” Younger Poet
“The Geode” Younger Poet
“White Egret, Green Field” Older Poet
Wishing you clear directions for your own day’s journey, wherever and however you are headed–LESLIE
What kind of event is it when a solar eclipse is, itself, eclipsed by cloud and rain? That is our situation here today. Elsewhere in the world, people are gathered for the rare show of the Moon passing in front of the Sun, a stately and celestial pas-de-deux.
To mark the occasion, I am publishing a poem that has not yet, I think, seen the light of day, but it was inspired by the solar eclipses in 2013, and by the Northfield Sidewalk Poetry competition held that year.
Is the Moon afraid
of its dark side?
Is the Sun proud
of its flare?
Can I accept
my whole, wild heart
when it holds
too much to bear?
Leslie Schultz
(I submitted three poems that year, including this one, and a different one–a celebration of pollination–was chosen, which can be seen below.)
Last week, I spotted this (below) posted in the Northfield Public Library–always a place for community and timely programming! Of course, wherever you are, when you look up into the sky, do protect your eyes from direct views into the sun.
Since last summer, I have been reading about color at the same time I have been working on a new quilt. It is important for me, as a literary artist, to have something engaging that is mostly non-verbal. Gardening, quilting, knitting, cooking, and especially the instant gratification of photography offer resting places when I feel myself growing overly heady and wordy. Nonetheless, words inform my understanding of all of these other fields and help to sharpen my visual perceptions.
Last December, my friend, poet Barbara Geary Truan, introduced me to the work of painter, teacher, and color theorist Josef Albers. She had recently seen an exhibition of his work, a slice of his famous “Homage to the Square,” which challenges what the viewer knows about color with startling and subtle juxtapositions. Recently, she and I had a conversation that made us realize that we had both been pondering an idea from color theory–that colors aren’t stable, that they shift depending upon what other tones, hues, tints, colors to which they are adjacent–and applying it to language. Words, too, shift. Meanings shade and nuances, as well as connotations, bloom and change depending upon context.
This book not only has intriguing content, it is wonderfully designed, and it includes a “Glossary of other interesting colors.” (Yes, I have inked in even more color names!)
For me, the shuttling back and forth between visual beauty and verbal art weaves through the texture of my days, gives my life more depth and delight. I suspect that this is the same for you, too. (Add in scent and sound and motion and there is never a moment not to be engaged by the offerings of the world and the thoughts of how one might engage with life and art.) For me, this is the fountain head of Poetry-with-a-capital-P, not only the words arranged on the page in an individual poem to summon the inner and outer worlds, but everything that makes the kalidascopic page possible.
Enough words for today! Below are a few more images.
Wishing you all the joy of your senses today, and all the reverberations it brings to your thoughts,
LESLIE
Inspiration for the Christmas Quilt–a card we sent years ago from the Metropolitan Museum of ArtCenter block of the quilt under constructionAmerican Swedish Institute, Exterior, 2016American Swedish Institute Exhibit, 2026
Part of the fun of working on a novel is trying to enter the mind and experience of someone Not-You. Someone else. In the novel that Tim and I are making, we have set the story in 1979, in a small town in Northern California. Two of the characters are poets. One of the poets is a college student, born in 1960. The other was born in 1927 and serves as a host and mentor for the younger poet.
One way that I have tried to get into the minds of these two characters is to write poems for them. What would interest them, catch their attention? How would they convey this in a poem? So far, for each character, I have written five or six poems. Only two or three might appear in the novel itself, but…what can I say? It is fun to fashion new poems.
Recently, I became curious about other novels that have protagonists who are fictional poets. I could not recall very many. There are many delightful novels that depict actual poets and one, Baron Wormser’s The Poetry Life, depicts the effects of poetry (by actual poets) on the lives of fictional characters.
But when it comes to main characters who are poets, with no lives outside of fiction, I could only think of Swann, by Carol Shields, and the trio of young adult books featuring Emily Starr of New Moon Farm by L. M. Montgomery. (If you know of any others, please let me know!)
In the couple of years since I served as a poetic scribe for our two characters, I have wondered if their voices would be clearly discernable to anyone else. Or, perhaps, do all the poems simply sound like me? It is an interesting thought exercise, but not one I can wrestle to the ground on my own, so I thought I would ask you.
What do you think? Below are six poems. In a future post, I will reveal which poem was written by/for each character, and also (should you like to weigh in) how many correct guesses each poem received. You can weigh in (“Older Poet” or “Younger Poet”) for any or all titles either in the Comments Section below or by emailing me at winonapoet@gmail.com. Thanks, in advance, for your thoughts!
