Author Archives: Leslie Schultz

Postcards from Red Wing: Highlights from the 2022 Poet-Artist Collaboration Event on April 29

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The 21st annual Poet-Artist Collaboration event organized by Red Wing Arts last night was a highlight of National Poetry Month! It was energizing and at times mesmerizing to see art works inspired by poems, and to hear from other poets and from the visual artists who had undertaken to interpret selected poems into three-dimensional forms. The two-part evening in Red Wing, Minnesota, at the Deport Gallery and then at the St. James Hotel, also offered the chance for informal conversations. A full list of all the talented participants can be found HERE. After two years of quarantine, it was wonderful to see so many welcome and familiar faces from Northfield and Winona, and to make some new acquaintances. And I was very pleased to be able to read my sonnet, “Echo from Hug Point,” to such a receptive crowd. (The link takes you to Mezzo Cammin Journal, where the poem was first published; my reading of the poem was also aired on the public radio program, Wordish, and included in my third collection, Concertina.

Below are a few images of the site and the evening. The grey, rainy day was leant real sparkle for a few hours. (A special thank-you to Tim, Julia, and Susan who came with me to share this special evening!)

Iconic Depot Clock
The Artist James Turner’s Interpretation of My Poem
Outside the Depot Gallery
“Miss Havisham” Robin, Who Appears to Be Clutching a Wedding Veil
Depot Gallery Post and View of the Mississippi
Poet Michael Kleber-Diggs Reading
Poet Ken McCullough Reading
Safe–a Welcome Feeling!

April 30, 2022: Spotlight on W.B. Yeats’s Poem, “The Wild Swans at Coole”; Background on My Poem, “Swan Song”

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Image by Andreas Glöckner from Pixabay

I didn’t encounter William Butler Yeats‘s poetry until the year after I was graduated from university. At first, I didn’t like it. Decades on, however, I cannot imagine my life without his work and without his example of steady workmanship despite the persistent ups of downs of personal and communal life. Like some of the other poems I have shared this month, this poem is one that I spent time committing to memory. 

The Wild Swans at Coole


The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?


William Butler Yeats
Image by panimo from Pixabay

In searching out a photo of Irish swans, I couldn’t resist sharing the image above that I stumbled upon.

Background on My Poem, “Swan Song”:

I know that Yeats has set the bar very high–stratospherically high–in not one but two magnificent poems deploying the force of swan imagery and mythology. (The autumnal elegaic one above, in all its calm and stately melancholy, contrasts markedly with his sonnet “Leda and the Swan.”) Nonetheless, there is always room closer to earth for another swan poem. This very wet spring, Tim, Julia, and I have seen a surprising number of swans along the Interstate resting on the ephemeral ponds created by snow melt and rain. My poem for today reflects these sightings.

Image by Andreas Senftleben from Pixabay
Image by romavor from Pixabay

Thank you for joining me on this April journey. Here’s to seeing new poems all year long!

LESLIE

(Photo: Leslie Schultz)

April 29, 2022: Spotlight on Gerard Manly Hopkins’s Poem, “Spring and Fall”; Background on My Poem, “Harvesting Enshrined Scraps”

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Spring and Fall

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

This wise and well known poem by Gerard Manly Hopkins is one I have committed to memory. One of the advantages of growing older for me has not been so much to be colder in the face of triggers for sorrow than to understand them better and to allow them to arise and subside in their season. I don’t feel innured to life’s pain so much as being better fitted to endure it and even sometimes learn from it. What I really love about this poem is its music. Who else could have crafted the line “though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie…”?

Background on My Poem, “Harvesting Enshrined Scraps”:

This month has been a time of looking through family photographs and deciding which to keep and which to release. It is not an easy process for most of us–assigning personal value to paper that carries no intrinsic value. Discoveries range from the delightful to the disconcerting. Perhaps the most valuable aspect for me is recognizing that everything (animate and inanimate) has a lifespan, and with periodic reviews it gets easier for me to recognize this and to act accordingly to release what is no longer alive with meaning for me. A form of telling time unavailable to the young, perhaps.

Wishing you a happy day, and a happy season! LESLIE

April 28, 2022: Spotlight on Adrienne Rich’s Poem, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”; Background on My Poem “Looking”

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Tiger, Predator, Fur, Dangerous, Big Cat, Animal World
(photo: Alexas_Fotos/Pixabay; used by permission)
Adrienne Rich as a Young Poet

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) is a poet who loomed large for me in college. Her poem about Emily Dickinson, “I am in Danger–Sir–” from her eighth collection of poetry, Diving into the Wreck (1973) helped me to understand the allusive half-rhymes of Dickinson as well as the strictures of her poetic and personal lives. Her earlier poem for poet Denise Levertov, “The Roofwalker,” (1961) helped me understand how it might feel to be a woman who published poetry, “…exposed, larger than life,/ and due to break my neck….”

Despite my admiration for her later work and life, the collection of hers that I keep coming back to is her first one. A Change of World (Yale University Press, 1951) was selected to receive the Yale Younger Poets Prize by W.H. Auden when Rich was in her senior year at Radcliffe College. I find the work astonishing seventy years later, and astonishingly mature for a young woman of twenty-two. Here is one of my perennial favorites:

Adrienne Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”

Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer’s finger fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

Amur Tiger, Tiger, Predator, Hunter, Nature, Animal
(Photo: TheOtherKev/Pixabay; used by permission)

Background for My Poem, “Looking”:

I have been looking at old family photos this past couple of weeks, and some memories have come back with new clarity. I had forgotten about the incident described in the poem–looking through binoculars at an ocean-going ship as a child, and the startlement of seeing a stranger looking back at me. A more extroverted child might have been thrilled!

(Photo: Pixabay: Used by permission)

Happy Looking! Happy Seeing! LESLIE

April 27, 2022: Spotlight on a Chinese Proverb; Background on My Poem “A Gesture of Peace”

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Outside Just Food Coop, Northfield, Minnesota

“Keep a green tree in your heart, and perhaps the singing bird will come.” Chinese proverb

I take this to mean that small ways of taking action, including listening deep within, are very powerful indeed.

Background on My Poem “A Gesture of Peace”:

Newly Folded Cranes

Today’s poem, “A Gesture of Peace,” is about the power of intention to bring healing into the world even in the face of despair and paralysis.

Wishing You Peace in Your Heart and Peace in the World We Share–LESLIE