Author Archives: Leslie Schultz

News Flash! THIRD WEDNESDAY Publishes “In the Produce Aisle” & “Cezanne: ‘House of the Hanged Man'”

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This quarterly journal never fails to surprise. It always offers a mix of new work by renown poets and the lesser known, as well as visual art. In this issue, the celebrated Ted Kooser has a poem called “Ohio Blue Tip,” which couldn’t help but remind me of my favorite movie, Paterson, which features a different poem about the same kind of match; and Marge Piercy has two poems, “I Observe the Climate Change and Complain” and “An Argument of Crows.”) Also, in this issue, I was so excited to see two poems by a poet friend from Winona, Minnesota, Scott Lowery. I was especially taken with his “Going Smaller.” Scott tells me that he will have a poem in the next issue as well. I don’t know the poet Laszlo Slomovits before, but I was moved to tears by the beauty of his “My 97 Year Old Aunt Ami.” I will look out for his work from now on. This issue contains dozens and dozens of other fine and surprising poems, and also features the winners of Third Wednesday’s recent One Sentence Poetry Contest. Now that I have seen what is possible, I might hazard a poem the next time it is announced.!

If you would like to see within the journal for yourself, here is a link to the Third Wednesday site where you can order a digital or paper subscription, and take a look at their blog.

As for my own poems, “In the Produce Aisle” had its first public reading at last winter’s Writer’s Night. Last April, I recorded “In the Produce Aisle” as part of a National Poetry Month podcast for my former employer, Just Food Coop. (Regular readers might recall the post about that event. If you would like another listen, there is a link in this short post from last April.)

Here is a photograph of the very produce aisle that inspired the poem:

(Note Tim in the back row of this shot–far right–of the new Co-op Board of Directors!)

As for “Cezanne: ‘House of the Hanged Man,'” this poem was inspired by a painting I saw some years ago when Julia and I traveled with a friend to Paris and visited the Musée d’Orsay. I bought a postcard of it then, and kept thinking about it.

Here is another digital rendering of the painting from www. paulcezanne. If you visit this site, you’ll find some interesting facts about the colors in this work of art.

Colors–paint or produce–how we need them on these grey days of winter!      Leslie

 

 

 

Mourning Mary Oliver: September 10, 1935 to January 17, 2019

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Mary Oliver’s works as a poet and a writer have left indelible impressions on me. When I learned that she had died today, I felt a stab of grief, followed by a feeling of joy at all she, this person whom I never met, had given to me through her work. I know that many, many people feel the same way.

Tonight, I want to share two sharp memories of moments when her work intertwined with my life, enriching and deepening it. The first is when I read to my students her justly famous poem, “Wild Geese,” at the end of one of my yoga classes. Here is a link to the complete poem. It is a poem about accepting life in a body–your own body, just as it is–and ends with an up-rush of sheer ecstasy for being alive, right now, in this minute. If you have a moment,  read it again (or for the first time.) That day back in the autumn of 2001, after reading it, I could hear geese on the wing not far away, sailing over the Cannon River.

The other memory is of a trip to Bayfield, WI with family. We were still new to homeschooling. I had brought Mary Oliver’s Selected Poems with me. Julia and Tim and I read a number of them aloud in the quiet and natural beauty of the Bayfield Pennisula, near the Apostle Islands, each of us responding in our own ways. That is a place where we have often seen bears near the side of the the road, crossing from one part of the forest to the other, and so I was especially taken, that day, with her poem, “Spring.”  The evocation of a newly awakened bear still thrills me each time I read this poem, or even when I just imperfectly remember it.

There are many beautifully written obituaries for her online, including this one from
The New York Times. I am grateful that she was who she was, and also that she broke her privacy to share, through her work, her clear and passionate observations of the natural world and the human pysche with all of us.

Leslie

Heartfelt thanks to my sister, Karla Schultz, for these amazing photographs of wild geese near Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin–and for taking the time to find them in her vast archives on short notice so I could share them here.