Author Archives: Leslie Schultz

April 8, 2025 Context for Poem “Hybrids, Hybrids Everywhere”

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Today, in thinking about the term “Hybrid”, I began to reflex on the way that that concept expresses itself not only genetically but in terms of language.

Thousands of examples abound. Some are so old and familiar that we no longer recognize thems as neologisms, portmanteaus, or new coinings. What are your favorites? Your pet peeves?

Today’s poem reminded me of an April poem composed in 2022, inspired by the new-to-me-fashion term, Athleisure. (If you don’t recall that poem, and would like to see it, let me know and I shall email it to you.) It also made me think of an April post from 2018 in which I share a double sonnet set that muses on some of the familiar words that William Shakespeare added to our language and on that magnificent lexicographical achievement, the Oxford English Dictionary. Here you can find that post and poem, “Half-Moon Set.”

Wishing you wordy-nerdy joy all day long!

April 7, 2025 Context for Poem “That Rocking Motion”

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(Photo: Teresa Williams Showy Ladyslipper: Garden of Bob Bensen and Tricia Smith

In 1902, the Showy Ladyslipper (Cypripedium reginae) became Minnesota’s State Flower. It was never common but now, due to loss of habitat, it is endangered. It has been protected for 100 years; sellers and growers–few and far between–require special permitting.

When I looked over the Rosendahl glossary for the letter G, I was delighted to see that a familiar astronomical term, “gibbous,” has a botanical application. A gibbous moon appears “swollen” somewhere in its cycle between half- and full- phases. In botany, certain plants, including the ladyslipper orchid, are also described this way. Once I knew that, I thought about the nutured (and legally sourced) ladyslipper I had encountered in my friends’ Northfield garden. The first time I saw it in bloom it bowled me over. This morning, as I came down the stairs, I saw the Gibbous Moon slowing sinking in the west. Today’s poem is an homage to these memories and to this plant, such an intricately beautiful harbinger of spring.

(Photo: Leslie Schultz, The Bensen-Smith Ladyslipper, Northfield, 2019)

Hoping that you will see fresh signs of spring today!

April 6, 2025 Context for Poems “Sometimes Love” and “Just After Dawn”

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Photo: Leslie Schultz “Union Terrace–UW-Madison”

The botanical term for today is “filiform” which (again!) is derived from Latin, this one from the word for “thread.” It is related to the word “filament.” I fell in love with its sound. Immediately, it made me think of spider webs–not botanical or accurate–(although I see that late Latin used the verb “filare”, meaning “to spin”). Now, I suspect, the spider web will join with “filiform” in a persistent association for me. And it offered me a chance to share again some favorite images from past posts.

Today, after “catching” two slight poems, small webs of words, I needed to disentangle myself.

It is sunny here and will be warm and lovely. The house is quiet. It seems like the perfect time to tackle those self-renewing sticky indoor spider webs that old houses simply generate without permission or cessation, and also to ply some thread in the borders of a small wall quilt that I am finishing.

(Photo: Leslie Schultz Window–Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, California)
(Photo: Karla Schultz Dewy Web)
(Photo: Leslie Schultz Spider Web, Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, California)
(Photo: Leslie Schultz, Frozen Web, Our House)

Wishing you a happy Sunday!

April 5, 2025 Context for Poem “Baltic Amber”

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(Photo: Andy Choinski/Pixabay)

Did you spot the botanical term in today’s poem? Good for you!
Rosendahl defines “exudation” as “sap, resin, or milk that has oozed out, usually dried.” I thought first of the milky substance that weeps from broken dandelion stems, then thought of Baltic amber and the shores of my distant ancestors–Jutland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Prussia, Britain.

It these frightening days, it helps me to think of geologic time, even as we strive to protect our own world.

April 4, 2025 Context for the Poem “Delta”

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Today’s prompt was a word that I knew but did not know was a botanical term: “Deltoid”. I have never quite noticed how the cottonwood tree produces triangular leaves, or that the veins on the leaves resemble the mouths of the world’s great rivers.

That word and context made me think of the triangle, the delta shape, and from there to memories along the Mississippi River.