Author Archives: Leslie Schultz

April 23, 2024 Celebrating Shakespeare’s Birthday and Appreciation for HAMNET by Maggie O’Farrell

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Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, subtitled “A Novel of the Plague,” was published in 2020. It is an amazing novel with amazing timing, coming as it did at the height of the global pandemic that disrupted all of our lives. Later than most, I have only recently read this justly celebrated novel. It explores the timeless themes of marriage and grief by reimagining Shakespeare’s early life in Stratford-upon-Avon, his relationships with his parents, his marriage to Anne (or Agnes) Hathaway, and his joy in being a father coupled with his restless pursuit of his art in the capital city of London.

I have previously read O’Farrell’s The Vanishing of Esme Lennox and The Marriage Portrait, so I knew that she is a powerful writer. This year, I read Hamnet with a group of book-minded friends, and I was glad to be able to discuss this work with other readers.

I have never read anything else that so vividly evoked the English countryside in the late 16th century, in contrast to the sights, odors, opportunities, and perils of the capital city of London. I also liked the way that this remarkable novel shed its imaginative light on the private life of young Will Shakespeare and his wooing of and marriage to local heiress Anne Hathaway. What was most enaging to me as a reader, however, were the subtle and poignant ways that this work of historical fiction conjured the universals twins of happiness and grief. There are several polished reviews available–especially those of The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Guardian–that are more scholarly and articulate than I am. Still, I thought I would share some of the notes from my reading journal here. (Apologies for any plot spoilers or cryptic passages!)

“It is rare that a book makes me weep actual tears, but this one did when I read the scene in which Agnes is washing her son, dead of the bubonic plague, and wrapping him in his shroud.

“Beyond the human drama, and the deft psychology throughout (including Joan, the dissatisfied step-mother and necessary malicious plot-turner who shows up with a playbill for Hamlet), and the delightful evocation of the Elizabethan countryside, and the agile speculation about who Shakespeare was in his private moments, there is so much more.

“I especially like thinking, with O’Farrell in the lead, of how twins–twins changing clothes, twins as completions of each other, of cheating death through a costume ruse, and of the the roles of the natural worlds (the Forest of Arden, the herbal garden, the river bank) influenced Shakespeare’s work. I also very much liked the ending, where two kinds of magic flow: the magic of the theater and the magic of healing, the healing power of story and poetry functioning almost as a medicinal botancial. The ending carries for me that rare satisfaction of adequate explanation while maintaining a sense of mystery.”

In Other Shakespeare News:

What could be more English than a cup of tea? We were given some wonderful white peach-matcha green tea from British firm of Harney & Sons for Christmas this year (many thanks, Danielle and Luke!) I like it so much that I have reordered it twice, so I was on the alert list for their newest offering:

And it was in looking at this web advertisment that I found a link to the restored Globe Theatre in London, featured in the climax of O’Farrell’s novel, the debut performance there of the play, Hamlet. What particularly delighted me about this link to the GLOBE is that it offers a virtual tour of the performance space. If you take it, you can see, under the canopy under the stage, the depiction of the heavens, including the Sun, the Moon, and all twelve signs of the Zodiac, beautifully painted against a celestial blue. There is much more on the Globe’s site, including filmmed clips from performance and a wild bouquet of dramaturgy across the plays.

I hope you will find a way to tuck a little Shakespeare into your day. Perhaps reread your favorite sonnet, check out Hamnet from your local library, or simply reflect on his assertion that “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players?” If this is true, what part do you play, and what part do you want to play?

Happy Shakespeare’s Birthday! LESLIE

April 22, 2024 Celebrating All the Poetry of the Earth and New Poem, “Terracotta”

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Musée de l’Homme, Paris (Photo: Lynn Sara Lawrence)

I had hoped to be able to write at least one new poem during this National Poetry Month 2024, and I did. The poem below, written for Earth Day, reflects on how we are all made of earthern materials, just as all the creation myths describe. Millenia older than writing, and still a forceful way for young humans to mark their presence, the hand print will never lose its power for either the maker or the viewer.

Terracotta


Handprints on cave walls splay,
outlined with iron oxides—
red, white, black &
yellow ochre, charcoal, clay.

Human touch everywhere:
yes, notice, too,
we are each signed, stamped
vessels of earthenware.


Leslie Schultz

Cave at Tito Bustillo, Asturias, Spain (Photo: Lynn Sara Lawrence)

I am grateful to Lynn Sara Lawrence for sharing photos with me–and now here–from her travels to ancient sites and museums in Europe that safeguard and interpret early art. (Note: her photographs are of facsimilies on display, not of actual cave art, which is carefully protected.) I had not heard before of Musée de l’Homme in Paris, and now wish that I could see their current exhibtion called “Préhistomania.”

I hope that today you find a way to make your mark while also living lightly–and light-heartedly–on our shared Earth.

LESLIE

Me, in Northfield’s Central Park, helping to decorate Booker the Book Bus in 2007 (Photo: Julia Braulick)

April 21, 2024 A Preview of GERANIUM LAKE: POEMS ON ART AND ART-MAKING, Part VIII and Poem, “Zinc”

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The final section of Geranium Lake is titled “Roadside Attraction.” It contains poems about what might be termed outsider art, from haute coutre to the fiberglass statue of the Jolly Green Giant or the simple design of the oriole feeder above. Innovation, inspiration, and good design can be found all around us. I, for one, do regard these one-of-a-kind objects as art.

Zinc

	for Corrine


Years ago, my now-deceased neighbor
set out small zinc dishes, fitted
them into shallow depressions she routed out 
into the wood of her back-porch railing
before filling them with purple jelly.

She had made the jelly, too,
from fruit of the crabapple tree at the front
of her house. She was set on enticing
the orange wink and blur of northern orioles
to this feeder of her own design

again, that spring, when she’d called me to bring
my fitful camera. We waited, talking
softly in the green-shadowed garden.
None of the orioles came that afternoon,
but her own nature, the sweetness of intention,

pierces me now from behind my chance image, 
this still-glossy photograph: a churned
surface of red-violet jelly, like a sea storm
at sunset, and one delirious drunken wasp,
diving headlong, accepting the sublime dish.

Leslie Schultz
Corrine and Peanut

This concludes the preview to Geranium Lake. Later this summer, when the book is published, I will make an announcement here. Thank you for allowing me to share a first glimpse with you. It isn’t enclycopedic work on art–there are no poems in Geranium Lake inspired by film, fiction, dance, or drama, for instance–but I have enjoyed putting this collection together. Perhaps someday, in another book, I will have other poems that reflect and consider other forms of art and art-making. In any case, I shall keep my eyes open and my pencil ready!

Meanwhile, I hope you will see art in expected, and unexpected, places–today and everyday!

LESLIE

April 20, 2024 A Preview of GERANIUM LAKE: POEMS ON ART AND ART-MAKING, Part VII and Poem, “Sunday Postcard to the Past”

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(Photo: Free Stock by T. Royce Xan)

As many of you already know, I find postcards evocative, and often they are catalysts for my poems. (As I am, for the most part, a reluctant traveler, I find this interesting. I will say that most of the postcards I purchase are in museum shops, and most of the weekly postcards I have published here have been images from my own small orbit–go figure!)

Section VII of Geranium Lake is devoted to the art form of photography.

(Photo: Leslie Schultz)
Sunday Postcard to the Past



Sited by Giotto, best viewed from the east,
as sun rises over the green-rimmed bowl
of Florentine hills, you, bell tower, stand
alone in your old, sacred precinctneighborhood,
lofty as spent granary, looming on the prairie,
or a rusting factory chimney. Sonic silo, housing
seven named bells, we climbed your four hundred
steps sometime in the last gone century.

It was early. We were happy, younger,
open to every view. You, campanile,
dressed in spumoni marble appliqué
without, were rough-hewn within: gritty, dim,
stronger than centuries or human life.
I remember–at each stage, as we climbed–
looking down through your center: your timbers
black as iron with age, your bells silent.


Leslie Schultz

This poem was originally written for National Poetry Month, on Earth Day in 2018, and was published on Winona Media. HERE is the original post–published with other photographs I took on that trip.

P.S. I once attended a Minnesota Humanitis Commission gathering in which Kenneth S. Brecher was the keynote speaker. He described his unusual memoir, in which he uses postcards from his collection to recall pivotal moments from his life, called Too Sad to Sing: A Memoir with Postcards (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, NYC, 1988.) My own copy is either in hiding or on the lam, but I recall this work with great affection. I believe it is currently out-of-print, but if it crosses your path, it is worth a look.

April 19, 2024 A Preview of GERANIUM LAKE: POEMS ON ART AND ART-MAKING, Part VI and Poem, “Mozart at Age Five: Koëchel #1”

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The sixth section of Geranium Lake comprises poems inspired by or describing music. This poem, a villanelle, considers the first composition, a minuet and trio in the key of G Major, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who, it is said, was only five years old when he composed it. This poem employs the music inherent in a strict pattern of rhyme and meter and repeated lines to suggest the restraint and repetition of classical music. You can hear the piece by young Mozart HERE (be sure to scroll down to the YouTube video cued by the photograph of hands on a keyboard.)

“Mozart at Age Five: Koëchel #1” was first published in the journal Mezzo Cammin in the summer of 2015.

Mozart: Koëchel #1 

So complete, this deft-handed beginning:
delicate but assured. Fine bones.
Precise but varied as the world’s spinning.

You can smell ambition. He’s keen on pinning
down those faint, celestial tones.
Quite complete, his deft-handed beginning.

Young gambler, he’s intent on winning
applause and love, those polished stones,
pretty and varied as the world’s spinning.

The music of the spheres bows to him, keening–
harpsichord anticipates trombones.
So complete, this deft-handed beginning.

Composers know each note means re-beginning,
borrowing what one never owns,
precise but varied as the earth’s spinning.

Like ladders, in his dreams come patterns leaning–
he dreams up sonic lattices and cones.
So completes this deft-handed beginning,
precise but varied as the world’s spinning.
Mozart’s Birthplace in Salzburg

Wishing you happy memories of your own early creativity, LESLIE