As many of you know, I first got to know the City of Winona, Minnesota through participating in the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest as a poet who writes in the sonnet form. Growing out of the successful Great River Shakespeare Festival, established in 2008, the Contest was the brainchild of Winona Poet Laureate James Armstrong and GRSF Artistic Director Doug Scholz-Carlson. Since a small regional start nine years ago, this contest has become a vibrant national and international incubator and celebrator of some of the best sonnets being written by contemporary poets. This expansion has been made possible by the participation of all three of Winona’s Poet Laureates (James Armstrong, Ken McCullough, and Emilio DeGrazia), by the diligent creativity of program administrator Heidi Bryant, and by the extraordinary and far-sighted philanthropy of Ted Haaland, husband of the late Maria W. Faust.
My own first submission was in 2013, and since then this annual contest has been an exciting part of my year, whether or not I had a submitted sonnet honored or not. Each year has been an opportunity to write new sonnets, submit my very best, and plan to attend the Closing Reading to hear sonnets read by actors in the GRSF company or by poets able to attend.
This year, I was honored to be asked to join James Armstrong, Ken McCullough, and Emilio DeGrazia as a judge. This year, a total of 604 poems were submitted from 214 people (poets can submit one, two, or three sonnets per submission.) These poets hail from thirty-five states and ten countries. Of special note this year, entries in the Youth category were up 58 percent, from 31 in 2020 to 49 in 2021!
All poems are judged blind–that it, the judges do not know who the author is, so the poem must speak for itself. With so many truly fine poems–excellent examples of the sonnet form, and, more than that, compelling writing on a large range of subjects, with varying points of view, tone, and use of language–it was very difficult for me to select my top choices, but I did manage to do that by going over the best submissions several times. When the judges met in July to compare lists and select the top winning poems in each category, I was struck by how often judges were in agreement on the merits of poems. I was also delighted that each judge was able to champion four “Laureates Choices” once the top poems were selected. A special pleasure at the end of that process–once all the winners were selected–was learning the names of these fine poets and seeing who had written each poem. Many I recognized through reading their work before: Scott Lowery, Marilyn Taylor, Anna Evans, Jean L. Kreiling, and Barbara Lydecker Crane. Most were new to me. Now all these names are ones I shall look for in the journals I read in the years ahead.
Names of the winning poems poets, and the full text of each sonnet, in a splendid digital version of a program with turning pages, is available on the contest website as well.
Below is a video of a Zoom meeting in which many of the poets were able to read their own winning poems. For those poets with winning poems who were not able to attend, either one of the judges or a member of the Great River Shakespeare Festival Company stepped in, so every winning sonnet can be heard as well as read.
The City of Winona is a bastion of lively writers, artists, and musicians, filled with good conversation, good food, and (of course!) amazing theatre through the annual Great River Shakespeare Festival. Most recently, I was able to learn more about the deeper history of the area through this beautifully written play by Emilio DeGrazia, enhanced by a thoughtful and thought-provoking introduction by Monica DeGrazia.
Stained glass window at the Winona Visitors Center
Wishing you continued adventures–reading, writing, exploring, and enjoying the remaining days of summer!
This year, more than 400 sonnets were submitted from poets from all over–many from the Mississippi River region, many from across the U.S., and each year more and more from abroad–this year submissions were received from nine countries outside the United States.
If you click on the link above, you’ll find a list of winning sonnets as well as poets’ names and home towns. I was quite surprised — and very pleased! — to learn that one of my own submitted sonnets, “Zebras in Sunlight,” is in the list. I was very pleased (and not at all surprised) that a fine sonnet by a poet-friend, Scott Lowery, was in the highest winners’ circle!
As an aside, I have realized that since the time I first learned of this sonnet showcase in 2013, I have truly begun to “think in sonnets.” I have written poems in this form for many years now and then, but I just did a loose count and realized that in the past six years I have written more than 100 new sonnets. I know for certain this would not have happened without this annual nudge from my friends in Winona. Thank you!
But I digress! The prelude to the event was music by the ensemble, Flutistry. This group of five flutists–Janet Heukeshoven, Heidi Bryant, Arlene Boll, Lisa Ramsey and Amanda Wenzel–wove the sonic spell that prepared us all for the music of the sonnets to come. Their program for the day ranged from a composition by William Byrd–a contemporary of William Shakespeare–to more modern works. All were rendered with verve and panache, as you can sense from the inset video clip, primitive though my videography skills are.
Valsette, J. Anderson Ashokan Farewell, Jay Ungar Mississippi Rag, W.H. Krell Earl of Oxford's Marche, William Byrd Fascinating Rhythm, George Gershwin Summertime, George Gershwin
After the music, everyone headed in to the theater.
Many thanks to all the people who have made this event a summertime essential for so many of us: present and past Winona Poet Laureates Ken McCullough, Emilio DeGrazia, and James Armstrong; readers from the GRSF acting company, including Artistic Director Doug Scholz-Carlson; Heidi Bryant, webmaster; the musicians of Flutistry; the hundreds of poets who submit work each year; and especially Ted Haaland, who supports this annual celebration of new poetry as a living memorial to his beloved late wife, Maria W. Faust.
If you know the river town of Winona, Minnesota, you know it is pulsing with exciting arts opportunities, spectacular natural beauty, and delicious opportunities for snacking and dining. In fact, their motto is “Surprisingly Weird, Incredibly Entertaining.”
If you fancy a scenic drive to this part of the state, I would like to suggest two poetry-rich dates for your calendar. The first is 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at the Blue Heron Coffeehouse, when I will be reading from my collection, CONCERTINA.
The second event is later in July, on Saturday the 20th at 10:30 a.m. on the Winona State University Campus. Each year, Tim and I like to hear the winning sonnets of the annual Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest read expressively by members of the Great River Shakespeare Festival. (The link above has more details on the 2019 capstone event as well as postings of the winning sonnets from past years.)
We will probably also visit the gardens and paintings at one of our favorite museums, the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, located right on the Mississippi. I am especially keen to see the exhibition up by justly celebrated photographer Alec Soth called “Sleeping by the Mississippi.”
Hoping to see you there, once or even twice! Happy summer travels!
I love sonnets. I have been writing them since I was in college. I respond to and create both the two dominant classic forms, Shakespearian and Petrarchan, and have attempted a few Spenserian sonnets. I have a whole host of fourteen-line poems that are variously sonnet-like, and discerning readers will have noted that the poem I published here last December, entitled “Winter Walk”, was an entwined double sonnet of my own devising. Some years ago, at the turn of the year, I was able to channel the grief I felt at the anniversary of my father’s death into art: in the space of twenty-four hours, I found I had written a five-sonnet sequence.
Why sonnets? They are the perfect size to establish, develop, and then reverse or sum up an idea. With fourteen lines of iambic pentameter one has 140 syllables at one’s disposal. A poet whose work I revere, and was very kind to me as a mentor, Amy Clampitt, told me that when she had a poem that was going on and on and she couldn’t tell where the heart of it was, she would try writing it as a sonnet, because that always clarified the essence of the work at hand. I enjoy the rhymes or slant rhymes, depending on the choices of the poet–I especially love to read a poem and then review it to realize it is a sonnet when I didn’t first observe that because the rhyme and enjambment was so skillfully handled. I also love the turn a sonnet reliably provides. Sonnets have enough room to be discursive, even chatty, but they are also succinct. They take just over one minute to recite slowly, with expression.
When Tim and I married, we included a favorite by Shakespeare in the service.
Sonnet CXVI
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare
This sonnet is one I know so well that I have it memorized. I have even tailored it by one syllable to make it more universal: in the last line, I change “man” to “one”.
For our tenth wedding anniversary, I wrote the following sonnet, in the Shakespearean style for Tim.
Midsummer Song
(August 6, 1998)
for Tim
So now our marriage completes its tenth year.
Surely this occasion is consequential,
but how to pluck one day apart, to say, “Here
we celebrate”? Fuss seems tangential,
after-thought. Each day unfolds like a rose,
gold or crimson, in its turn, opening to sun;
then, as petals drop, the heart is free to close,
to brood and transform, to ponder two-in-one.
A decade ago, we publicly pressed our lips
together, setting sail into these middle years.
A start, but a loss, too. The honey of rosehips
tastes of tart autumn, tinged with cold and tears.
Each flower holds it sleek, obsidian seed.
I hold fast to you. I know what I need.
Leslie Schultz
Below, I have included some sonnets in the other dominant English-language form, the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet: two by William Wordsworth and one by me. (How to tell these two sonnet forms apart? The rhyme scheme is the first clue. Shakespearean sonnets end with a rhymed couplet, and the couplet supplies the “turn”. Petrarchan sonnets only occasionally end with a couplet–in some variations–but the logical turn happens much earlier, usually in the ninth line.)
The World is Too Much With Us
The world is too much with us. Late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
William Wordsworth
2014 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest: Deadline
As many of you know, the 2014 Great River Shakespeare Festival/Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest is now open. Full Contest rules and details are found at GRSF.org/SONNET. This contest is now in its seventh year. For sonnet writers all over the globe, it is a wonderful chance to compete in a range of sonnet formats and tones–from Shakespearian, Petrarchan, and non-traditional metrical and rhyme schemes, from straight-forward love poems to humorous observations, story-telling, and impassioned social commentary.
Contest organizer, poet Ted Haaland, has edited a beautifully made anthology of the sonnets from the first five years of the competition (2008-2012).
This Melody Weaves In and Out, showcases the possibilities of the sonnet form. Copies are available for $10.00 (postage included), and proceeds are added to the pool of prize money for future sonnet contest winners. If you’d like your own copy–to inspire your own sonnets or simply to enjoy–send a check for $10 and your mailing information to:
Ted also says, “This year, to mark this 7th annual Contest, the 3rd in memory of Maria, you are invited to join us at a Sonnet Contest “Kick-Off” event on Saturday, April 26th (during National Poetry Month) beginning at 11 AM, at Jefferson Pub and Grill’s 2nd floor meeting room, here in downtown Winona on Center Street. This is a free event, and is held on the last day of the Mid West Music Fest. Room seating capacity is around 60, and since this event is a first for us, we’ve no idea how many to expect, so we encourage promptness. This is an opportunity for some of us to learn about sonnets, and others of us to read sonnets,either their own or those of favorite poets. We anticipate that Winona’s present and past Poets Laureate will be attending. We will have a drawing for a book of collected sonnets spanning several hundred years, and, of course, coffee and snacks will be available. Since some of us can’t seem to avoid rhyming, we say, ‘Come & celebrate Will’s skills with quills.'”
Tintern Church of England School for Girls
(Melbourne, 1973)
With plaits and dresses neat, we stand
to see the sheep and shearer meet.
We have our cotton gloves in hand
to fan away November’s heat,
and we pull our stockings to our knees
while Third Form herds its project in.
The black-faced ewe weights down the breeze;
her rank coat makes the shearer grin.
“Stand and deliver!” He grabs the ewe,
wrapping her legs in one strong hand.
His shears are rough and bite a fold
Of clumsy skin. As bright as dew
The blood drops bead, then scatter on the sand.
Despite the heat, I shiver, shorn and cold.
Leslie Schultz
The above sonnet was written some years ago, and it is based on a memory of an enrichment event at an Australian girls’ school I attended. (Interestingly, I never heard anything about Wordsworth’s masterpiece, its long title usually abbreviated “Tintern Abbey”, until I was a senior in college.)
I entered it in the Maria W. Faust Contest in 2013 and was awarded a prize. I have already addressed an envelope for this year’s submission, and am listening intently. I have several sonnets that I might send, but if I catch wind of an engaging iambic pentameter line, who knows, I might find myself with an even better candidate. Stay tuned! Better yet, try your hand at a sonnet and send it in to the contest!
Portrait of Maria W. Faust
“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
“So long this lives and this gives life to thee.”
(William Shakespeare, Sonnet XVIII)
Roses in front of the beautiful Northfield Public Library
Scorn Not the Sonnet
Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch’s wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camöens soothed an exile’s grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!
William Wordsworth
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A good friend of mine, Bonnie Jean Flom, knows her way around a classroom. With long years of experience not only as an artist but as a grade school teacher, principal, and educational consultant, Bonnie Jean is still discovering and sharing new ways to excite young children about language and learning.
Recently she shared with me an idea that got me excited, too, and so I want to share it with you. Bonnie Jean spent time during April in the Austin, Texas visiting her son, Scott Norman. While there, she spent a delightful day with the fifth graders he teaches. In addition to helping these young students write and publish their work for their classroom, Bonnie Jean observed students celebrating National Poetry Month by arranging books in stacks so that the titles on their spines created short poems. The students then photographed their poems before re-shelving their constituent books.
Poetry + photography? I thought this sounded like a wonderful idea!
Here are two examples that showcase the limitations of my library and imagination but also the fun I had. After a little experimenting, I decided they read most naturally from the top down. Frustrations included not having the sounds I wanted, wide variation in font size and style, realizing how many of my books have dull titles like “Complete Poems” that mask the excitement of the contents within, and (ouch!) having a slippery, heavy stack slide onto my toes. (Lessons learned: wear thick clogs and compose short poems.)
In the photos, I have endeavored to line up the germane phrases, but they still might be rather hard to read. I include the texts below.
Poem One:
Elements
Sensitive Chaos
World Poetry
Doubt
Engineers of the Soul
The Enchanted Loom
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
Poem Two:
God Be With the Clown
Write from the Heart
The Story of My Life
Fractured Fate
Can Poetry Matter?
Tirra Lirra By the River
Help, Thanks, Wow
The Opposite of Fate
Talking to the Sun
A Kiss in Space
Imaginary Gardens
The Golden Gate
So…are you itching to try it yourself? Go ahead! And let me know what you come up with!
Other News
Summer always means Shakespeare at our house. We think of his birthday, celebrated on April 23. (Born in 1564, that would make him 449 years old today.) And then it seems natural to seek out a production of his work or to re-read a play or recite a few of the sonnets. This year, Julia and I hosted a “Reader’s Theater”; a total of 9 people gathered at our house to read Hamlet, scene by scene, one act per day. We paused after each scene to discuss the action, to look up unfamiliar words and concepts, to puzzle over character’s motivations, to examine recurring themes, and to recast the actors’ roles. Everyone got to share in the big parts as well as the bit parts. We also included vestigial costuming (a grey pashmina draped over the head for the ghost of King Hamlet, a red beret for Laertes who is off to France, matching Disney World lanyards for the goofy Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee that are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.) We had lots of laughs and some new insights, too. A reader’s theater approach is a low-tech but highly interactive way to bring any dramatic work off the page.
In other regional Shakespeare news, check out the Great River Shakespeare Festival held in Winona, Minnesota through August (www.grsf.org). In addition to performances and other events, the festival is holding its sixth annual sonnet contest, open to authors around the globe.
Note also that the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, which included in its first season a noted production of Hamlet, is hosting productions both of Hamlet and of Tom Stoppard’s companion black comedy, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, in the spring of 2014, as part of its 50th season. (www.guthrietheater.org)
