Author Archives: Leslie Schultz

April 14, 2017 Poems: A Trio of Clerihews for Benjamin Franklin

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A Trio of Clerihews for Benjamin Franklin

Ben Franklin was no fella
to lift a limp umbrella.
On stormy days, it was he
who lofted that kite with electrified key.

Is Franklin the source of every invention?
That would be his own contention;
with lightning rods, smoke-less stoves, bifocals,
and more, he stands benefactor to us, the yokels.

Still, when I think about Benjamin Franklin,
there is something prickly and ranklin.’
Through the lenses of his inventive glasses
he seems to be laughing at us.

Leslie Schultz

Today, I followed the prompt from the NaPoWriMo site to write a little humorous poem called the Clerihew. If you are curious about the form, visit the NaPoWriMo site using the link below. I found I had such a wealth of material in my subject that I ended up writing three!

For anyone who has read the English satirical classic 1066 and All That, or enjoyed an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus or Jeeves and Wooster, you will recognize the strain of humor straight away. Harder than it looks, but fun to attempt! (Full disclosure: I am listening now to a seventeen-cassette audio book version of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. It creeps into every conversation!)

The photos below come from the college visit trip I made with Julia last year to Philadelphia.

LESLIE

“A penny saved…”

Check out other participants at the NaPoWriMo Challenge 2017 home site!

 

April 13, 2017 Poems: “Four Medallions: Inspired by Photographs from Karla Schultz”

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NaPoWriMo 2017 April 13

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Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly, Chapel Hill, South Carolina (photo: Karla Schultz)

Papilio glaucus

Common,
your tiger stripes,
Tiger Swallowtail, are
uncommonly elegant on
mauve bloom.

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Hummingbird Moth, Raleigh, South Carolina (photo: Karla Schultz)

Macroglossum stellatarum

Daylight
forager, you
sip nectar, chug sweetness,
Hummingbird Moth, until stars
whiten.

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Goldfinch, Chapel Hill, South Carolina (photo: Karla Schultz)

 Spinus tristis

Rising
from thistle-down~
motley-golden-khaki~
your waved-shaped flights weave one year,
Goldfinch.

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Dawn with Seagull, Amelia Island, Florida (photo: Karla Schultz)

Laridae

Each dawn
finds you, Seagull,
on the freshly made shore—
a new day, golden ideas
cast up.

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Today, on my sister’s birthday, I am celebrating Karla’s patience, skill, and artistry in capturing these amazing images from the natural world. Her work continues to amaze and inspire me. I have learned so much from studying not only her images but the wealth of science to which they offer me access. Her photographs feel like passports out of my human mind into the lives of flowers, trees, birds, insects, reptiles, and other mammals.

Thank you, Karla, for sharing your art with me and the world. Happy Birthday! May the year ahead be filled with exciting moments of beautiful discovery.

Leslie

Check out other participants at the NaPoWriMo Challenge 2017 home site!

April 12, 2017 Poem “Embellishment”

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NaPoWriMo 2017 April 12

Embellishment
(A Condensed Autobiography)

I first encountered coffee
in my mother’s kitchen,
thought its scent delicious
but its taste rank, odious.

It was in college that I began
savoring it, requiring it.
I learned the beguilements
of dark roast in Louisiana.
(Ah! Graduate school! Where I studied
the intensity of Community Coffee,
crystals dark as embers
igniting every morning!)

When did I first stumble upon whole beans?
Yes, in Minnesota, as a writer, grinding
out words, with serious dollars
and deadlines swirling my brain.

These points of my caffeine dream
I recall clearly. But when did coffee
reach beyond sugar and cream?
Become latté? Transform from
the quotidian nightmare
of T.S. Eliot into something
more Venetian, more sublime,
and now presented with ephemeral,
foaming, graphic appeal—all
just a short stroll
from my house in Northfield?

Leslie Schultz

Coffee with Myrna, Brick Ovens

Wishing you a good morning and a satisfying-to-the-last-drop day!

LESLIE

Check out other participants at the NaPoWriMo Challenge 2017 home site!

April 11, 2017 Poem: “At the Theater: A Dream of Stars”

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NaPoWriMo 2017 April 11

 

At the Theater: A Dream of Stars

I settle in the theater, in a seat on the aisle,
with a clear view to the stage.
Then a woman claims the seat just in front
of me. Well, now I can’t see! She must be seven feet tall
with good posture. She is wider than a doorway,
her hair dense with leaping curls. The only thing
missing is the straw hat with a feather or flower.

Somehow, I know she is wearing wrist-length, white
gloves.And polka dots. She listens intently, never whispering
to her companion, who is, maybe, the little man shot
from the cannon in another show. I crane my neck,
first one side, then the other, glimpsing the movie
in fragments. She has every right to be who she is
and where she is, but why am I here, so blinded? Then

I know: we are in a cave, both staring at Plato’s flickering
fire, she the movable wall between me and the cool
illusory flame. We are shadow puppets at rest. She
is the band of silhouette circling the planetarium’s
domed screen. I have only to look up or down or
elsewhere— into the roiling heart of me?—
and peer through the dark lens of poetry.

Leslie Schultz

Wishing you a day when new planets swim into your ken!  Leslie


Check out other participants at the NaPoWriMo Challenge 2017 home site!

Postscript: Poet-Artist Collaboration XVI–A Celebration of National Poetry Month!

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Tim and I traveled to Zumbrota, MN last Saturday evening for this year’s salute to National Poetry Month at the Crossings at Carnegie. Each year, a group of poets and artists are paired up through a juried process, and then they come together to meet; introduce and read the poems; and view and enjoy the resulting visual art inspired by the poems.

After fifteen previous such celebrations, Marie Marvin and her staff have this event down to a fine artistic science. Beginning with a potluck reception at Crossings gallery & shop, moving to the nearby State Theater (operated by the Zumbrota Area Arts Council) for readings by poets and comments by visual artists, and then back to Crossings for lively conversation and closer looks at the art pieces, this event has something for everyone. And it gets better every year!

This year, among the twenty-three pairs of literary and visual artists, Tim and I were pleased to see poets Christine Kallman (a Northfield neighbor, playwright, and Sidewalk Poet) and her daughter; to see poet Ken McCullough and his wife, playwright Lynn Nankivil,  friends from  Winona; and to meet new people including a multi-talented artist from Red Wing, Art Kenyon, and his wife, Kathleen. Art created a painting inspired by my poem, “Nomad’s Daughter” (originally published in Third Wednesday.) His comments, and our conversation afterwards, helped me to understand my poem better. I love what he did with the poem, taking it into a dimension I could never have imagined. Below are some photos of the evening, to give you a flavor of it.

I was excited to find the painting inspired by poem.

Tim and I snagged good seats for the main program.

I get to meet “my” artist, Art Kenyon. Having thought about one poem in depth this spring, he decides to take home my book, Still Life with Poppies: Elegies.

Below, impresario Marie Marvin, and I channel the energies of Broadway’s classic, Cats–especially appropriate since the musical is based upon T.S. Eliot’s poems in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Marie models one of the evening’s wearable artworks, a polar fleece hat and mittens combo designed by Lana Sjoberg and inspired by Mim Kagol’s poem, “Cat in the Garden,” while I wish I could really sing!

It was an unforgettable evening that still has us clicking our heels!