Category Archives: Poems & Stories

April 28, 2023 Spotlight on “Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher” by Walter Savage Landor and My Poem, “On Biography”, and Context for My Poem, “Coming Attractions”

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Walter Savage Landor, English Poet (1775-1864)

Earlier this spring, I became more deeply acquainted with Victorian poet Walter Savage Landor. I had sent a copy of my first collection of poems to a friend, and when she read the first poem in Still Life with Poppies: Elegies, called “On Biography”, she wrote to say that it was worthy of Walter Savage Landor.

Wait a minute, I thought. I know that name! I knew he was Victorian, but I could not recall any of his works, so I looked him up. At the Poetry Foundation entry for Landor, I found a good sampling of his poems, and I fell in love with one that was knew to me. It is called “Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher,” just four lines long. I printed out a copy and fixed it to the refrigerator. It is now memorized—engraven on my heart.

Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher
     by Walter Savage Landor

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art;
I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.

Now I am mindful not only of the very active life of this accomplished poetic forebearer but also of the compliment paid to my own small poem. And what a fascinating life Savage Landor lived! After the turbulence he created and endured, his epigram might only be a wish–it seemed he strove with everyone!–but it is is so purely crafted that, even if it is sheer fiction, it rings with quiet conviction. My hope for Landor is that he did achieve this kind of acceptance of life and death by his late demise, and for myself that each day, lived to the full, would serve, should the need arise, as “a good day to die.” In the meantime, I am forecasting that this summer is “a good season to read more poems by Walter Savage Landor.”

Here is the poem of my own that sparked all this exploration:

On Biography
	to those I leave behind

I would write a book that cannot burn, 
a book of clear-running water,
complete, with song and  wisdom—stern
as my beautiful daughter.

All biography ends in death.
All lifelines run their seaward course.
Read me again, while you have breath,
until you know my secret’s source.


Leslie Schultz
(first published in Mezzo Cammin; 
  republished in Still Life with Poppies: Elegies)

Context for My Poem, “Coming Attractions”:

This poem was inspired by my day in the garden yesterday, in the company of my beautiful daughter who deliver the surprise gift of a “Bluebell” grape vine (Thank you, Andrew!), and also from the quiet mood of Landor’s poem. As I remind myself frequently, “The present moment is the gift.”

Wishing you a serene day,

Until Tomorrow, LESLIE

California Poppies, Lanesboro, 2015 (Leslie Schultz)

April 27, 2023 Spotlight on TOTALLY WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORDS Edited by Erin McKean and Context for My Poem, “Moromancy”

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Who doesn’t love words? The sounds, the connotations, the denotations, the multifaceted meanings and pronunciations and histories, personal and otherwise? I often recall exactly when I learned a new word, either on the page or through the medium of the ear. That sense of expansion, juxtaposition, and possibility for use is one of the most delightful aspects of a being alive, I find. I guess my friends know that about me!

This offering from Oxford University Press (2006), Totally Weird and Wonderful Words, edited by Erin McKean, arrived on my own shelf late last year as a Christmas gift (Thank you, Beth!)The cover declares this gathering of unusual words as “A whimsical lexicographical petting zoo,” and I agree: this sums up not only the substance of this summoning of rarely encountered words but its spirit as well. It is the updated edition of an earlier title by lexicographer McKean that contains more words, all arranged alphbetically with etymologies, helpful pronunciation clues, a logophile’s bibliography of Oxford Press’s dictionary offerings, and a guide to coining one’s own candidates (correctly, from Greek and Latin roots), words that don’t exist but simply should.

The very first word I chanced upon late last fall was “lacustrine.” I still haven’t used it in a poem, but one day I will. (It means “associated with lakes”–the lakey version of “riparian” or “associated with rivers”–and a useful word for a poet who lives in the Land of 10,000 Lakes (really north of 14,000 at last count.) Until I see how to deploy it effectively, I shall keep it in my pocket like a polished stone.

Context for My Poem, “Moromancy”:

Today’s poem, “Moromancy”, takes an off-kilter look at human attempts at forecasting and was inspired by an entry in Erin McKean’s reference book (above). It means either “foolish divination” or “telling the future by observing the behavior of fools.” And yes, I had to add it to the spellchecker dictionary!

Until tomorrow, LESLIE

April 26, 2023 Spotlight on THE SECRET LIVES OF COLOR by Kassia St. Clair and Context for My Poem, “Polychrome”

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This is the most recent book added to my culled library. I bought it just yesterday morning. The excitement is akin to that of a new box of 100 crayons!

Look! A Rainbow of Cut Edges!

To have a clearer look at the table of contents, please see the link below. (In addition to thoughts on individual colors, there are fascinating general remarks on optics, color perception, and helpful indices. Meanwhile, here is an Impressionistic taste of the interior.

Context for My Poem, “Polychrome”:

My Collage of a Quilt–Photographs of Fabrics to Create a Bagua

Yesterday, I took some valuable advice from a book I will spotlight before the end of the month on good bookstores. I allowed myself to not simply picked up the book I was after, but I allowed myself to browse our local independent bookstore, Content. There, at the very back of the store, on the bottom shelf, I saw the book spotlit today: The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair (Penquin Books, New York, 2016). Sat down to explore its structure and style. And, feeling very excited, brought it home.

So far, I have only read a tiny sliver of its pages but I am certain it will be a permanent resosurce. I have always felt that color is medicine. Too many cloudy days make me feel sick, and I think that full-spectrum light enhances health because it contains all possible color. Linquistically, this resource has great resonance because it showcases the names we have devised for different tints, shades, and hues. I have been enjoying the history of common-name colors and becoming acquainted with names antique or otherwise obscure to me previously. I have also been making mental note of the color names I perceive and use that are NOT here! I feel sure this will provide not only pleasure on first reading cover-to-cover but serve as a kind of color thesaurus for my work as a poet and writer. I think it will help me to be more precise, and it will probably also lead to new ideas for poems.

Case in point: Last night, I read about an ancient pigment called lead white–long-lasting and terribly toxic. I thought that might lead to a poem about poisons. Yet, this morning, I awoke thinking about the seemingly colorless, white or bleached buildings of the Mediteranean world, and how shocked I was to learn in an art history course in college that they were originally highly colored. The result is today’s poem.

Until tomorrow, LESLIE

April 25, 2023 Spotlight on THE THOUGHTFUL DRESSER by Linda Grant and Context for My Poem, “Once: Wyoming”

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For several weeks now, I have been resavoring Linda Grant‘s perceptive prose in her non-fiction work, The Thoughtful Dresser: The Art of Adornment, the Pleasures of Shopping, and Why Clothes Matter. (Scribner, NY, 2009). (It is hard for me to believe that I have so far missed her prize-winning fiction–perhaps this summer I shall be able to remedy that!)

Context for My Poem, “Once: Wyoming”:

Photo: Pete Zarria (Flickr) “The Mint Bar, Sheridan, Wyoming”
The pocket watch I bought on that day

I think today’s poem, “Once: Wyoming” was sparked by my reading of Linda Grant’s treatise. It reminded me of the experiments of dress I made as a college student, and made me think about how we all sometimes try to dress the part when we aspire to some role or other. Specifically, I was remembering a shopping expedition in a city foreign to me–Sheridan– when I was just twenty years old and clearly seeking out an identity that fit. I was also having a lot of fun!

There is pleasure and pratfall in this kind of exploration, of course. Somehow chiming in my brain is this tangent, from Alexander Pope, inscribing his pithy definition of “wit” on two of his signature couplets” from “An Essay on Criticism,” written in 1711, when he was twenty-three.

“True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;
Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind."

I still wonder what, if any, connection exists between what one sees in the mirror and what one sees on the page one has labored over.

Until tomorrow, LESLIE

Postcard of artwork by Gene Zesch that hung on my wall after my return from Wyoming–it still cracks me up!

           

April 24, 2023 Spotlight on “Stanley Kunitz” by Mary Oliver, and Context for My Poem, “Fairy Tale Quilt”

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Garden Magic (April 24, 2023)

I have shared my love of Stanley Kunitz and Mary Oliver separately before on this blog. Today, I want to share one of my favorite poems of Oliver’s about her friend. Certainly gardens and poems are magic places. Maybe those who succeed in creating something transporting do have a little bit of the magician in them, at least in a fleeting way, to participate in the everyday magics of growing plants and shaping words.

Stanley Kunitz 

I used to imagine him
coming from his house, like Merlin
strolling with important gestures
through the garden
where everything grows so thickly,
where birds sing, little snakes lie
on the boughs, thinking of nothing
but their own good lives,
where petals float upward,
their colors exploding,
and trees open their moist
pages of thunder -
it has happened every summer for years.

But now I know more
about the great wheel of growth,
and decay, and rebirth,
and know my vision for a falsehood.
Now I see him coming from the house -
I see him on his knees,
cutting away the diseased, the superfluous,
coaxing the new,
know that the hour of fulfillment
is buried in years of patience -
yet willing to labor like that
on the mortal wheel.

Oh, what good it does the heart
to know it isn’t magic!
Like the human child I am
I rush to imitate -
I watch him as he bends
among the leaves and vines
to hook some weed or other;
I think of him there
raking and trimming, stirring up
those sheets of fire
between the smothering weights of earth,
the wild and shapeless air.

Mary Oliver (Dreamwork, 1986)

Context for My Poem “Fairy Tale Quilt”:

Little Red Riding Hood

This quilt, as the poem makes clear, was made by my grandfather’s mother, Mary Houghton Pressel, in Detroit in 1930, when she was a young and active mother. To shape the poem, I transformed history, since, as you can see, I had different images framed. To share these with you this morning, I decided to photograph them in our garden.

If you look closely, you can see the old flannel sheets peeking out on the right-hand side. As a quilter myself, and one who spent two hours yesterday in a losing battle to mend one of my own recent quilts, I am really happy to know that in some sense quiltmaking has a history in my own family.

Until tomorrow, LESLIE

The Three Bears