You can find the Table of Contents for this issue (and ways to order a copy or a subscription) HERE!) And in addition to the literary art inside, you can learn the backstory about the cover design.
This long-lived journal also has made the archives of its early decades available online for download (in four batches, covering the years 1910 to 2007–incredible riches.)
Happy Reading! LESLIE
Happy Reading! LESLIE
First things first! Today is the birthday of Karla, my dear sister, and I am celebrating all day long. In a way, I have been celebrating all year long, and the theme for today’s post centers on the that. First, though, I wanted to share with all of you (and with Karla’s permission) the most recent of the incredible images she sent me as a card in the mail. (As you probably know from other posts, Karla is a gifted photographer and artist. Often, when I talk with her, I hear the birds she feeds on her sixth-floor balcony, and I am in awe of her ability to capture them so unobtrusively and clearly in her photographs.)
Regarding the Poem for April 13, 2021: “A Quilt for Karla”
Since I began participating in the National Poetry Month Challenge in 2016, I have a tradition of making the poem that comes each April 13–whatever other prompt may come into play–centered on the great luck of having Karla as my sister. Today’s poem is no exception: it is inspired by her presence in my life.
The poem is, I suppose, an exploration of how love helps us piece together the scraps of life–whether in a cloth quilt or in a poem–into patterns that, while part of tradition, are also unique expressions of the moment, the individual, and the particular. And pieced in with that is an awareness of the news here and elsewhere that troubles the mind and heart deeply, how we need to balance that awareness with hope, because that is what love says to us, that hope is not empty but at least as real as pain. And that change, making something new, starts with an intention that is added to, day by day, and is not perfect but is still something well meant and useful that was not there before.
As a corollary, and with Karla’s permission, I am sharing photos of my process over the past year’s in designing (with Karla’s input on pattern and color) a special quilt for her sixtieth birthday. She has told me that it arrived safely, and that it does fit her new bed, and that it is not too warm at the moment for Atlanta weather. Check! Check! Check! I am sorry that I cannot be with her to celebrate on this special day, but I am just thrilled that she woke up this morning, and could look down and see something made just for her and know how much she is cherished in this world.
All the cutting, piecing, and quilting was done by hand, but (for the first time) I used a machine (given to me by my friend, Corrine Heiberg, her beloved Elna) to sew some of the long straight seams joining the blocks so as to make it stronger and longer-lasting.
Library Spotlight:
Among the great gifts of my time in the M.F.A. program in poetry at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana was honing my craft as a poet and taking my first hesitant stitches toward becoming a quilter. I had been enamored of quilting for several years when I arrived. No one in my family made quilts–though they sewed and knitted. I still wanted to learn, but, frankly, I had been going about it all wrong. Yes, timid bibliophile that I am, I had bought two books on the subject and read them, along with dozens of photograph-packed issues of Country Living Magazine. I suppose, I thought, that the skill might be absorbed through some from of ink-to-cloth osmosis? I wrote a poem (“The Book of Quilts”) inspired by an illustrated oral history that I have featured in another post, but I didn’t know how to take the first step toward making my own.
That didn’t happen. What did happen was that I mentioned my yearning to a classmate, Tom Ray. He said, “Oh, I can teach you how to quilt.” And he did, in one afternoon. That little kindly one-on-one lesson was all I needed to begin. I was off and running before the week was over, cutting out shapes for my first pieced project, a red and white “Drunkard’s Path.”
Also during my years at McNeese, when I worked at the Library’s circulation desk, I first learned of the compendium of Quilts in America by Patsy and Myron Orlofsky (Abbeville Publishers, 1974.) I checked this scholarly treasure trove out as many times as I could. A few years later, (when I had an income!) I learned it was out of print, but I located a used copy in great shape. (Trust me, this was a bit of a safari before access to the Internet.) I still refer to it, and am grateful for its existence.
Of the many books on quilting that I treasure, consult, and enjoy, this one is at the top of the list. The Quilts of Gee’s Bend (Tinwood Books, 2002) is the exhibition catalog for a dazzling collection of quilts that Karla took me to see almost twenty years ago at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta where she lives. If you don’t know about the Gee’s Bend, Alabama quilt artists, please take a few minutes to savor their artistry, history, resilience, and living tradition of women supporting each other, learning from each other, and delighting in inventing ways to bring beauty into the practical world of daily life.
On that visit with Karla, I was bowled over by what I saw, and no less so when my generous sister then made a gift to me of this magnificent volume.
Until tomorrow!
LESLIE
Vantage Point
April 22, 2020—50th Anniversary of Earth Day
for Beth
There is a little climb ahead.
It is worth it. I promise.
Yes. These prairie grasses are tall,
already, in April.
It is hard to see the trail today.
But it is there, made by feet before us.
Look! A pleated gentian, blue as the sea.
And a pink wild rose, sister
to the apple and strawberry. Here’s the flick
and bob of the prairie warbler, olive gold
with a voice like silver bells. And over there,
past the orb-weaving spider in her web,
can it be a small stand of cacti, sheltering
against a wall of white sand?
Yes. I see some char, some broken glass.
I guess that is natural, too.
There is a compass plant, something to steer by,
almost as tall as a tree. And there is the lone cedar, shaped
by the wind, reaching, reaching…
Sure. Take a moment to catch your breath
under this immense blue. It is true,
there are a few storm clouds on the horizon
infused with the colors of abalone, holding
the rattle of thunder. Let us hope for some streaks
of Promethean fire.
Tonight, the new moon
offers new beginnings: Tomorrow
and all the tomorrows ahead.
Leslie Schultz
I have been thinking a lot this spring about how the first Earth Day, back in 1970, arose from the catalyst of photographic vision–both scientific and poetic–from NASA’s first images of Earth from the vantage point of the Moon. We saw in a flash, it seemed, that this is a single if intricate whole that all of us share. We saw the beauty and the fragility, and that we are in this together–not just humanity but all of the forms life takes. That profound insight help to shape progressive legislation and a shared vision. I believe we are all experiencing something like that now, in this pandemic that knows no borders. My hope is that going forward we will be able to act on this insight so as to enlarge our sense of compassion and belonging, our confidence in the effectiveness of individual and collective actions to make a positive difference.
I think today’s poem might be a pencil sketch for a longer, more complicated poem that looks at the lives and works of John Muir, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, and Gaylord Nelson. Perhaps others, too. On April 22, 2017, I published this villanelle, “Motif for Ansel Adams”, inspired by his own words. (I included there a link to a six-minute documentary–“Ansel Adams: Photography with Intention”.) I would like to do something similar for these other environmentalists, but I see I will need more than one day to think all that through.
When I was in high school, I received a writing award from the National Council of Teachers of English, and afterwards a signed letter from Senator Gaylord Nelson congratulating me. I wish I had known then of his stellar environmental record and of his own (much more influential) literary accomplishments. Now on my wish list? His last book, published in 2002: Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise. I see there is also a new edition of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac with an introduction by Barbara Kingsolver. At the urging of our friends, the Clarys, we have already ordered a copy of the documentary, Tomorrow. I hope it comes today.
Meanwhile, I shall just take it one step, one breath, at a time. Perhaps today will be the day for a trip to the McKnight Prairie Remnant near our home. If conditions are right. The vantage point there is unparalleled.
Happy Earth Day! LESLIE
During these odd grey and isolated days, as the count-down begins for my textcentric posts each day in April to celebrate National Poetry Month, I have been thinking of poetry’s sister art, photography, and the ways I have tried to “write with light.”
This March, I have been looking out of the window more often. Also deep into closets and filing cabinet drawers, clearing and sorting accumulated paper. I’m having some surprising and delightful discoveries of forgotten moments; finding forgotten enthusisams that can be relived; and also experiencing moments of saying “Huh? Now why did I think this was so valuable?” Maybe you are doing this, too? With the mind more still it is easier to assess what really needs keeping. And it is easier to see the way life has moved us in new directions.
Take, for example, my love affair with photography. It started when I was a child pouring over the photograph albums kept up by my mother. I began taking photographs with a point-and-shoot camera in high school, and after seeing a life-changing exhibition of work by master Henri Cartier Bresson, I began to try to think in pictures, so balance the moment in terms of light and shadow, background and foreground, sharp and soft focus. When I was a junior in college, a young woman in my dorm, Jean, gave me a tutorial in one of the University’s student dark rooms. (If I can locate it in the now-mouldering stacks of mimeographed paper I have yet to sort, I plan to share here a poem I wrote about that day.) When the following summer I traveled to Wolf, Wyoming to work on a ranch (as a waitress on a dude ranch, I hasten to add!) I took a few images that still help me recall my early passion for photography. (Some of these I published last year, on Shakespeare’s birthday.)
I never became adept at F-stops or with baths of developer and fixative. Still, I kept pointing and shooting. I worked with professional photographers to secure the images needed to illustrate the profiles I wrote over thirteen years for a now-defunct publication for a prominent foundation. When Julia was born, the pace of photo snapping accelerated. In the years that Tim worked for fallen film giant, Kodak, I got my first digital camera, which was freeing. (From there, I discovered the digital SLR, followed most recently by the ubiquitous iPhone camera.)
When my father died, in December 2003, my grief created a turning point through photography, when I undertook a ninety-day study of an amaryllis against the backdrop of a friend’s painting. This spiritual and artistic exercise taught me as much about lifespan as it did about light and shadow.
Then, two much more brave and experienced artists helped me to move to a new level.
In 2005, a friend, Patsy Dew, and I, decided to collaborate. Some of you might recall Kalafield Images’ posters of locally sourced images, our five years of shared presence at the Northfield Arts Guild’s annual Art Fair during Defeat of Jesse James Days (2005-2009), our cards in local shops. Patsy is a bold and consummate artist in many disciplines, a Northfield Living Treasure. Her companionship emboldened me to share my work through sales and exhibitions. Patsy is still very active as a photographer. For a real visual treat, check her website.
Meanwhile, my sister, Karla, inspired me not only with her (VAST) technical expertise but with the exquisite images she captured in the wilds around Atlanta, Georgia where she lives and anywhere she travels. (A search on “Karla Schultz” here will yield many posts that showcase her images of light, landscape, flora, and fauna. One of her pictures of me appears below.) Her encouragement, gifts of equipment, and especially advice on software and camera care were invaluable. Most valuable of all has been the periodic opportunities to go with her on what we call “photo safaris.” I continue to learn from her work and her example.
A trip to Paris in March 2009, gave me new confidence. I brought back images that eventually led to an invitation for a solo show in Minnetonka, the subject of the “Part II” on this subject I plan to post soon.
Even as I have left printing, framing, and exhibiting behind, sharing images here instead and focusing more and more on poetry, prose, and essay, I still recall the thrill of seeing a photograph I had made printed large and hung like a window on an inside public wall. And so I thought I would share some of the highlights here, combining images of a variety of exhibitions.
SEBASTIAN JOE’S (2009)
An early foray was at a coffee shop in the Linden Hills area of Minneapolis, near Lake Harriet, where we lived prior to moving to Northfield. I recall my heart pounding as I inquired about showing my work, my astonishment at the easy “Oh, sure” that resulted. Once the date was set, Tim, my trusted artistic friend, Bonnie Jean Flom, and I drove with the framed photographs, wire and wire cutters, putty (to secure pictures to the wall.) I had already gone up to measure the walls and check light conditions so I knew what I wanted to print, and how to group them. Here was the artist statement
As a poet and photographer, words and images are fluid – not quite interchangeable, but closely related – with arresting visual images giving rise to poems and poems coloring how I view the world through my camera lens.
Photography helps me see everything around me with more tenderness, noticing beauty where I might otherwise overlook it. I’ve learned that each moment is distinct and unrepeatable. In a split second the light changes, the subject changes, I change. These photographs were taken in various locations (Northfield, Minnesota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Atlanta, Georgia; and Paris, France). I hope they give you pleasure right here and now.
NORTHFIELD ARTS GUILD GALLERIES (2006-2012)
The Northfield Arts Guild has been a place of welcome for this budding visual artist. I first started showing photography in the yearly Members Show. In 2009, I was invited to show work in a satellite gallery they maintained in our local Allina Medical Clinic.
I was also thrilled to be included in a show of thirteen artists, curated by Patsy Dew and Meg Ojala in 2011, called “Northfield Ties.”
And in another show in 2012, “Small Works,” included two of my black and white images.
Also thanks to the NAG, I connected with an arts consultant who worked with hospitals and clinics. Through her, I was able to sell some photographs that are (I understand) in various collections. There are two here in Northfield. Here is my favorite.
THE CROSSINGS AT CARNEGIE (ZUMBROTA, MINNESOTA) (2010)
In January 2010, Marie Marvin invited me to show work in the art center she created in Zumbrota, Minneosota. The exhibit, and the lively opening, was a heady and heartfelt evening.
The Crossings has also been important to me through its annual Poet-Artist Collaboration which invited visual artists to interpret selected poems, then brought everyone together for a reading and exhibit and general celebration. Now that The Crossings art center has closed, I was cheered to hear that the event lives on under the aegis of the Red Wing Arts.
As my attention has moved away from exhibiting photographs (aside from here on the Winona Media site!) I thought about the sheer bulk and poundage of those images that had their moment in the sun. Many of these framed prints are still in our house, but one house can only shelter so many. Some have been sold over the years, and many given away. It is really rather pleasurable to encounter work around down, in the homes of friends or in a few public spaces like the Allina Clinic. I think of it as the grownup version of the thrill children have when they see their art work displayed on the refrigerator door of a neighbor.
Thank you to everyone who has cheered me on in my love of trying to take pictures, and especially those of you who have come to the various gallery openings over the years. On these grey and secluded days of narrow orbit, I am cheered by seeing again the shapes and color in these images. I hope that they have give you a moment of respite, too.
If you have read this far, thank you for joining me in scrolling down Memory Lane!
Majesty
for my sister, Karla
All winter, this view has comforted me:
your photograph, on canvas, filled with green,
palest blue sky, golds, and red glowing leaves,
supported by lattices of tracery.
You sent it for my bleak, frozen birthday,
knowing mine falls when our branches are bare,
knowing how our heavy skies glower grey
as unpolished silver here. I can stare,
up from understory to sun-fired glow:
a tree circled by delicate vine, a view
as heart-lifting as a stained-glass window.
Today, on your birthday, I offer you
heart-felt lines of thanks for the quiet majesty
of your soaring spirit, your care, your artistry.
Leslie Schultz
Regular Winona Media readers know about the keen ability of my sister, Karla Schultz, to find and capture images of the natural world. Her images are dazzling and humbling, and I am grateful for her permission to share them here from time to time.
For the past four years, I have been happy that, since Karla’s birthday falls on April 13, right in the heart of the National Poetry Writing Month marathon, I have had the perfect spur to concoct and share a sororal paean. Though I can’t be with her on her special day this year, I am happy to know that right now she is out with her cameras.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KARLA!!!!
