Category Archives: Poems & Stories

North Dakota Quarterly Publishes My Poem “Winter Song”

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North Dakota Quarterly (NDQ), currently under the editorship of William Caraher, has been publishing continuously in its inclusive format (fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction, and interviews) since 1956.

The most recent issue, pictured above, with cover art (“Bubble”) by Todd Hebert, contains work from nine fiction writers, five non-fiction writers, and forty-nine poets (a total of 81 poems.) It also features a timely and thought-provoking essay from NDQ’s creative non-fiction editor and bagpipe player Sheila Liming titled “Of Bagpipes and Brexit, Cabbages and Kings.”

As a public-spirited departure from standard practice, NDQ is offering a free digital version of the current issue to anyone who wishes to download it. And, believe me, it is worth reading cover to cover. My own copy, received recently, required many page points to mark work that delighted me and made me think.

Of course, you will have your own favorites. (I would love to know what they are!) Still, I can’t help mentioning just a few of my own.

Fiction: “The Workshop” by Dan Moreau and “how it will happen” by T. L. Toma

Creative Non-fiction: “Talking to Myself” by Michael Cohen

Poetry: “As Sea Levels Rise & Fall” by Sheree La Puma, “Dig” by Laura McCoy, “John Fahey Begins His Public Life as a TA, Hawaii, 1962” by Keith Carver, “Finding a World Inside This World” by Tom C. Hunley, ” and “Nothing Has Been Proven by Reaching the End” by Jeremy Griffin.

Each one of these literary artists was previously unknown to me. I am grateful to North Dakota Quarterly for introducing me to their work.

Thanks for allowing me to share this reading and publishing adventure with all of you!

April 30, 2020 Poem “Point Zero”

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 Point Zero
  
  
 All new things start in the circle of Point Zero.
 The trickiest forms commence with the blank page.
 My sense of beginning goes wherever I go.
  
 What I’ve already done is past. (You’d think I would know
 this bald and cardinal truth at my ripe age.)
 Each new thing must spring from the heart of Point Zero.
  
 Each untried idea holds a certain glow.
 Even when closure governs my maker’s rage, 
 my zest for beginning opens wherever I go.
  
 Possibilities glimmer. Sometimes vertigo
 swims up and I am dizzy, as if on stage—
 I recall that pratfalls lurk in Point Zero—
  
 and I freeze, caught in emotional undertow.
 Then I breathe and allow the fear to disengage.
 My need for beginning goes wherever I go.
  
 “My” ideas aren’t mine alone. They exist and they flow.
 They wash me out of every preconceived cage.
 Each insight leaps from the pinpoint of Point Zero,
 recreating me, too, everywhere I go.
  
  
 Leslie Schultz


On our 2009 visit to Paris and the Loire Valley, Julia, our friend, Ellen, and I made a point of standing in front of Notre Dame on Point Zero, the place from which all distances are measured in France. Not a single day goes by when I don’t think of that, and of the idea of starting out afresh, of exploring variations on the themes of what I already know. The villanelle, that venerable French form, built up of echoes and repetitions, seemed the best way to celebrate this perennial insight.

Thank you, all, for coming along with me on this journey through the month of April in 2020. I truly don’t know how I would have retained my equilibrium in this most unsettling time without poetry–and your companionship.

Good health to you all, and bonne chance! LESLIE