The poem below is the title poem of the fourth section of Geranium Lake. It was written for National Poetry Month in 2019. HERE is the post from way back then. The poems in this section are all, in one way or another, about the artistic priniciples and practice derived from the natural world, or, more accurately, the non-human natural world, since humans, too, are part of nature. (The amnesiac part, I often think–the tiny drop that thinks itself separate from the ocean.)
Aquarium
Ichthyography
What would it be like, the writing
of fish? Something shining, I think,
a muscular, flowing
calligraphy,
a Piscean script—
accents of whirlpool
and fin flip.
Shimmering,
colorful circumlocutions
used, like kennings, over and over,
and with lots of sudden twists
and turns in the plot, breaks
long as winter, slower to resolve
than river fog rising.
What would it be like
to write not with ink
or light but with water?
Describing each fresh syllable
with my whole body, then
erasing it all as I go,
every gesture a metaphor?
Leslie Schultz
Goldfish, Como Conservatory
May this be a day when every cloud shape and tree branch finds a way to speak to you! LESLIE
The Chesterfield Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida Courtyard Fountain, “Youth,” Norton Museum of Art (Photo by Laura Robinson, 2016)Edmund Weston, American (1886-1958), Shell and Rock Arrangement, 1931, printed circa 1947 (Permanent Collection, Norton Museum of Art)
Today’s poem is drawn from the third section of Geranium Lake. This section is titled “Ars Poetica.” It gathers together poems that celebrate–or at least explore–the ways in which the poetic ambiguity of experience flows into poetry on the page. The poem featured here was written after I had undertaken to write two capital campaign case statements for a prominent museum–a few years apart–and made a couple of memorable journeys to Palm Beach, Florida. The first of these campaigns doubled the footprint of the historical Norton Gallery of Art, allowing it to grow into its new identity as the Norton Museum of Art.
On my second visit, in the aftermath of a tremendous hurricane which downed palm trees and threatened the Museum’s collections, the curatorshowed me the place in the floor of one gallery that had marked the outer wall of the old building. It was a thrill to be able to step across it, seamlessly, into the labyrinth of new spaces dedicated to new art. After the tour, though, I felt paralyzed by perfectionism, worried that I would not be able to create the poetic prose required a second time, worried I would not be able to perform when expectations were high.
One cannot encounter the art of others without be moved, sometimes to making art one’s self. For me, this is part of the message of Wallace Stevens‘s masterful poem, “The Idea of Order at Key West,” which I all but memorized in graduate school. My rather cheeky homage to him also alludes to the opening lines I love in his poem “Sunday Morning:”
"Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo..."
Pool, Chesterfield Hotel, Palm Beach, Florida
Today, I mentally substitute “silky freedom of a Maltipoo.” Those who have met Stella know why. In the end, the project was completed with some level of verve. The client and I were both happy. In that afternoon of quiet poolside terror, I was far from feeling complacent, but from a distance I am relaxed about that sojurn. I hope Stevens would enjoy the juxtaposition of “nails” with “palm beach” and the oddity of monkeys in leopard print…one really cannot make these things up!
Polishing My Nails in Palm Beach
A sojourn in Wallace Stevens’s country
I.
The Chesterfield “Charming’ Hotel faces west.
Monkeys framed in leopard print
perch on the elevator door,
adorn the moving walls.
Two decades since I’ve traveled here.
The sky is still cloudless;
the awnings snappy now,
red and white stripes;
the cabbies irascible as always.
In middle age now,
I sit by the pool
polishing my fingernails pink.
This trip is not about me,
not about my photography or poetry,
not about my family – except
that is why I am here, to support
my family, my life,
my precious, playful monkey business.
II.
This morning, at the client’s request,
I drank it all in.
Open to the sky, the old courtyard
of the Norton Museum of Art
is filled with the music of water,
stirs with fresh air, while four striped palms
wheel their louvered green blades.
Skinks, alert and active, shake the purple blossoms
framing an octagonal pool.
At the very center stands “Youth,” carved
in stone, as we all wish it were,
continually renewed,
ankles lapped by clear currents,
toes tickled by coins, her weary mask
of age, slipping like a fan,
tracing the arc of the setting sun.
III.
Now, I must sit with my own fears,
to face the best
I can do, understanding perfection
is impossible but progress
is polish, a slight
iridescence of language
that makes all the difference.
Oranges.
Scent of sweet jasmine.
Shimmer like sun breaking on blue waves.
Art is refreshment – a breeze
off the ocean of time.
Black Rooster–Art in Bloom–Minneapolis Institute of Art 2018 (Photo: Leslie Schultz0
The second section of Geranium Lake is called “Black Kites.” The name comes from a poem written for National Poetry Month in 2018. This section holds poems that are a bit darker and starker, inspired by sculpture and painting, as well as some photographs, posters, and insignia used for documentary and sometimes propagandistic purposes. (You can see that poem, and a photo of the sculpture that inspired it HERE.)
Today’s poem was inspired by the dislocation that can come when some remnant from the distant past, even a past one did not oneself experience, evokes an intangible, unsettling, but powerful response. This kind of amorphous, multi-faceted summoning is part of what gives art its enduring value. The book of photographs (cover image above) that inspired the poem, full of the extreme contrasts found in Tsarist Russia, below can be found in the synopsis at Publisher’s Weekly.
The Eyes of the Dead: A Synesthesia
(inspired by Before the Revolution, St. Petersburg in Photographs)
I turn these pages rich with photographs:
women, men, children—like mournful giraffes;
long-suffering horses under heavy yokes;
carts and Romanov carriages, gilded spokes
and iron wheels; ramparts of bricks and stones
(some still standing); lofty hats; rigid bones
(beneath silk bodices—human and whale);
jumbles of crockery; one pint of ale.
I close the covers, lift the heavy tome.
Setting it on a shelf, I think the room
is quiet but then a faint perfume
of haunting eyes—pierced with the foreknown gloom
that this wide earth is temporary home—
knocks inside my brain, demands its own poem.
Leslie Schultz
Fruit (Photo: Leslie Schultz)
Wishing you a day of striking and informative contrasts along with startlingly new perceptions, LESLIE
The biggest poetry news on my own horizon is the publication of my fourth full-length collection of poems. It is called Geranium Lake: Poems on Art and Art-Making. It is scheduled to come out mid-to-late summer, and is being published by the Aldrich Press imprimateur of Kelsay Books. Many of the poems in the collection were written over the past eight years in response to the April Poem-a-Day challenge. The title, and the title poem, were inspired by the pigment, geranium lake, which was used often by Van Gogh and other Impressionist painters.
The collection is divided into eight sections. For me, ekphrastic poetry is a very big tent, indeed, covering poems inspired by and/or describing any art-form, high or low, insider or outsider, and even the way nature exhibits artistic and design principles. Over the next eight days, I will give a one-poem glimpse into each section, and offer a little background on that poem.
The first section is called “Color Wheel” and in centered on poems about painting–both particular paintings and the act of making pictures by brushing paint onto canvas. “I Wanted to Be a Painter” was written on my second stay at the “Art Loft” apartment over the Lanesboro Arts shop on Parkway Avenue in the bluff country river town of Lanesboro, Minnesota. It was first published in ONE ART: a journal of poetry.
Once upon a time…Julia’s visit to the studio of Fred Sommers…
I Wanted to Be a Painter
And I still do.
I picture lying down
to soak up malachite
and vermillion
through my pink skin,
rubbing my face with wild
persimmon and aubergine,
then washing myself clean
with icy aquamarine.
I’ve tried. It’s true.
See from these twisted,
empty tubes just what
I cannot do.
So I retreat now into
bone-pale paper-birch strips,
add marks in reed-strokes
of midnight tone,
all hushed, mute,
stark—
each line one sharp-edged
Scandinavian hue.
Leslie Schultz
(Photo by Karla Schultz)(Photo by Karla Schultz)(Photo by Karla Schultz)(Photo by Karla Schultz)(Photo by Karla Schultz)
Everyday, I am inspired by the art of my sister, Karla. This year, she agreed to select, from her thousands of flower images, some of her own favorites to share with us today, on her birthday. Thank you, Karla!
Wishing you long life and joy every day!
The Freshest Flowers
are those strongly rooted,
alive to sun and dew,
each one distinct
as a crystal of snow.
Look closely. Lean in.
Wonder at varied hues,
at pattern with infinite--
but not-quite--repetition.
Call this Nature
or call this Art:
a flower captures
the human heart.
Leslie Schultz
Daffodils and Scilla in Our Garden This Morning (Photo by Leslie Schultz)
