Author Archives: Leslie Schultz

Super Nova News Flash! My Book, CLOUD SONG, is Published by Kelsay Books

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Last June, while I was in Decorah, Iowa, touring the Vesterheim Museum with my friend, Ann, I got an email informing me that the manuscript for my second collection of poems, Cloud Song, had been accepted for publication by Kelsay Books. As you can imagine, I was ecstatic! I asked Ann to take a photograph of me in that moment. Here it is:


(Photo by Ann Wilson Lacy)

It is fitting, perhaps, that behind me is the twenty-five foot, hand-built ship, TradeWind, that Harald Hamran and his brother, Hans, sailed from Norway to New York in 1933. According to the logbook Harald kept in English, ““Our chances are slim, but no matter. It’s great to take chances when all things are against one.” That is certainly the way it can feel when one sends out a single poem–like a message in a bottle–or a collection of poems–a buoyant but fragile bundle of reeds lashed together into a raft. It certainly feels like a small species of miracle to see one’s poems bound together into the form of a book.

Cloud Song is arranged into three sections–poems inspired by the sea; poems inspired by landscapes, gardens, and plants; and poems inspired birds, ,sky, weather, and constellations. I suppose there is a sense of journeying underlying them all–journeying inward or outward bound.

I think Harald Harman sums up the hazards and the excitement of the creative process: “It hurts…especially when admiring the silvery moon, and thinking of a dream girl ashore, to be rudely awakened by a flying fish in the eye.” But that flying fish…that’s what’s memorable!

If you would like to locate your own copy of my new book, it is available locally at Content Bookstore or at Amazon. Here is a poem from the collection:

The Best I Have to Offer
 
I make my poems into little paper boats,
put a light in each, a small votive candle,
then sail them into the dark.

They are borne on my experience, over
shoals and snags, the salt and cold rot,
monsters and sinuous beauty rocking deep beneath.

Poets always know that their fragile vessels
may never reach the other shore or
even see the morning, but
what else can we do?

Poems are precious;
the light they carry is
the inestimable treasure of witness.

Together, flotilla of millions,
they form new constellations,
fling back radiance into the ocean of stars.

Leslie Schultz

HAPPY SAILING! HAPPY READING!  LESLIE


(Author Photo by Atia Cole)

Norwegian Book Case; Vesterheim

News Flash! BLUE UNICORN Publishes My Poem “Clue”

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On Saturday, the February issue of Blue Unicorn arrived at our house.

Blue Unicorn: A Tri-quarterly of Poetry is a selective journal edited by Ruth G. Iodice and John Hart, based in San Raphael, California now entering its fifth decade of publication. It is organized as a non-profit, with yearly subscriptions available, as well as individual copies.

This most recent issue has a broad array of fine and interesting work. There are translations of epigrams by the Roman poet, Martial, by two different poet-translators (Brent Southgate and George Held); a translation of a poem by German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (“Woman Going Blind” translated by Donald Mace Williams); and a riff called “French Interlude: Rondeau on Themes from Aragon” by Mark J. Mitchell.)

Most of the forty-five poems included in this issue are contemporary poems in English. These poems range widely in terms of subject matter, form, and tone. You’ll find terza rima from the point of view of the species of tall grass that anchors the U.S. heartland and is under great stress from environmental factors (“Big Bluestem” by John W. Steele), a bold poem with incantatory force (“The Apple, William Tell, and Emily Dickinson” by John P. Kristofeo), and a valedictory poem saluting the lasting impact and value of one of my favorite poets, Richard Wilbur, who died this year (“A Distant Aubade: The Poems of Richard Wilbur Considered and Praised” by William A. Holt).

My own poem, “Clue,” was sparked by one of those lazy domestic moments some years back when Julia and I decided to play the classic board game, Clue. We talked over how to play the game, and then Julia asked a key question, “Yes, but who died?” So we scrutinized the printed rules and found out that the victim is always the host, Mr. Body. In the way of questions, one answered leads to a host of others, and that small moment long ago gave rise to my own poem.

Each poem in this issue of Blue Unicorn stands alone, but together they are an Ali Baba’s cave of poetic gems, and I am really happy to have my own poem in their lustrous company.

Wishing you a rare and splendid day!  LESLIE

Our Piano with Needle-point Unicorn by Karla