Tag Archives: Leslie Schultz photography and poetry

An Annoucement on Celebrating Poetry Here in April 2024

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American Elm, April Sky

After eight years (2016-2023) of taking up the National Poetry Month Challange of writing and sharing one new poem each day, this year I will lie fallow. Why? After all, I have gained an octave of poetry-centric Aprils and twenty dozen–240!–new poems and been able to share them immediately. It has been exciting and truly enjoyable. I expect to return to this poetry-creation marathon next year, in April 2025.

This year, however, I am going to try something with a different shape of spontaneity.

Much as I enjoy the annual April challenge and have gained from it, for me it becomes a full time creative job for thirty days. A marathon. This novennial, I want to keep my creativity flowing, as it has been each day recently, into fiction, and I have realized (over the past two years of working on a long piece of fiction with Tim) that I can’t do both at the same time. This year, with 90,000 words towards a novel, and an upcoming novel-centric research trip scheduled for early August, I want to devote as much time as I can toward completing a (no doubt very rough) first draft without breaking that momentum. Yet, how can one ignore National Poetry Month? I can’t!

So, this year, I am going to share something here each day in April to honor poetry but in a more freeform way than I have before. I might share thoughts about a classic poem I love, or share a poem of my own written outside of the April Challenge context, or a prose passage I find highly poetic, or news about a poetry reading or publication. It is even possible that I will write a new poem during the month!

And, as of now, I plan to return in April 2025 to take on the Poem-a-Day Challenge with new vigor.

As always, thank you for your companionship and good wishes. May poetry enrich your life every month of every year.

NewsFlash! THIRD WEDNESDAY Publishes My Poem, “A Cache of Antique Postcards”

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I have long had a thing for old postcards. I suspect most of us do. When Julia was little, our dear neighbors, Corrine and Elvin Heiberg gave us many that they (and their parents) had collected on their travels or received. We enjoyed looking at them, front and back, deciphering the handwriting, admiring the vintage stamps, and thinking of future travels of our own. We even invented a geography game that probably only Julia can remember which morphing rules governed.

Lately, when I have looked at some of those depicting monuments and historical points of interest, my point of view about what is depicted and what it means to me has shifted a bit. I wonder how the past connects to the future and just where I fit in.

Third Wednesday Magazine is one of my personal favorites as a suscriber, and so I am so pleased to appear on their pages again.

If you would like to read my poem, click HERE. Thanks for reading this! LESLIE

News Flash! THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY Publishes My Poem, “Song for a Gown of Dust and Flame”

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This issue of The Midwest Quarterly is a powerhouse, and I am proud to have my poem included in it. My own poem centers on the Viking funeral Tim and I provided, on our anniversary, for the wedding dress, inherited from my great-grandmother and worn at our wedding. It was too tattered and fragile to be worn again, too precious to send to the landfill.

This issue arrived in my mailbox on Friday. I have enjoyed each of the poems, and I would like to call out “Aristeia” by Lynn Glicklich Cohen and “Fathering” by Patricia Clark for special praise. Each poem surprised me with its ending and delighted me with its language.

In the week ahead, I am looking forward to reading the scholarly articles, particularly the one by Daniel Dougherty titled “You Are Now in the Power of Stardust: Crime and Punishment in the Golden Age of American Comic Books.” (Coincidentally, I have been working this week on a rare-for-me poem centered on the figure of Batman, based on a photograph I took last summer of a Gotham-embellished pickup truck tailgage. I was a reader of Batman and Superman comics long ago, so I feel ready for scholarly insights on this topic.)

If you are interested in looking into this issue, copies can be ordered from The Midwest Quarterly’s website.

(For more images of the antique wedding dress of my own poem, please see these earlier posts: “Anniversary Poem and Wedding Dress Adventures” (published on August 7, 2013) and “The Wedding Dress Afield: LP Version” (published on August 28, 2013).)

LESLIE

News Flash! NORTH DAKOTA QUARTERLY Has Published My Poems “Something Fishy” and “Autumn Rain” in the Fall/Winter 2023 Issue!

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It is a rare and happy day when an issue of NDQ arrives, and especially so when I am honored to have my own work appear in its pages. I am especially delighted this time, because editor William Caraher said yes to both my lyric, “Something Fishy,” and a prose poem, “Autumn Rain: After Turgenev.” Inspired by Turgenev’s own prose poems, I am still figuring out the parameters and possibilities of the prose poem, and so I am very glad for the validation of my attempt in this form.

North Dakota Quarterly began publishing more than 100 years ago, in 1911, as a vehicle for faculty at the University of North Dakota to publish their scholarly papers. Today, the journal offers a diverse, international mix of essay, fiction, and poetry while remaining strongly rooted in North Dakota history, landscape, and traditions. See, for example, the memoir of the Rev. Dr. Clifford S. Canku, (Sisseton-Whapeton Dakota), an eminent scholar of Dakota language and history, presented in collaboration with his student, John Peacock, (Spirit Lake Dakota), now Professor Emeritus at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore; and the poem, “A Tale of Two Cemeteries,” by UND graduate Bette Nelson.

On the other hand, this issue is rich with the prose and poetry of those from across the U.S. and Canada, and as far away as Sydney, Australia; Liverpool, England; Abuja, Nigeria; Tehran, Iran; and Serbia. Those interested can purchase a paper or digital copy, or a subscription, at the NDQ site.

Here in Northfield, Minnesota, we are bracing for a windy snowstorm coming tomorrow. Today, I shall be taking advantage of the golden sunshine and clear roads to do errands and stock up on groceris. Tomorrow? This issue of NDQ is my passport to armchair travels through the experience and imagination of dozens of others.

Stay warm and happy! LESLIE

Sun and Snow

My Poem, “The Beauty of Emptiness,” is in the Winter 2023 Issue of THE ORCHARDS POETRY JOURNAL

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The Winter 2023 issue of The Orchards Poetry Journal has just been published online. The winter issue always arrives just when one wants to curl up under a lap robe with a cup of hot tea and read the grey afternoon away. (Here in Minnesota as I write, we are still waiting for snow, making do with rain, so this entrancing cover is, in more than one way, a promise of things to come.)

Because this issue was just posted yesterday, I have not read it from end to end yet–that would just be plain greedy! What I have looked at so far online makes me anticipate even more being able to read the paper copy coming in the early days of the new year.

Perusing the table of contents, I was struck by the title,”Lake of the Isles, March 2017.” Surely this must refer to the place I know very well in Minneapolis! It does. The poet, Paula Reed Nancarrow, is a Minnesota poet, as I discovered. After reading her eloquent elegy, a masterful villanelle filled with the lights and shadows of the season, I subscribed to her blog.

Another title that jumped out at me was “Yachats,” a poem by Jennifer Stewart. The title caught me because it was a new word to me but it whisked me back to the world of my girlhood on the Oregon coast. (“Yachats,” I discovered, is the name of a small coastal town whose name means “dark waters at the foot of the mountain” in the Siletz language.) This free verse poem was powerfully evocative of both place and the language that fixes it in consciousness. I could smell the salty fogs and feel the smooth undulations of driftwood. I also learned that she reviews her favorite Asian movies at youtube.com@dramajen.

Hoarfrost in Sun (Leslie Schultz, 2016)

I am also pleased to see a lovely poem from friend Sally Nacker, entitled, “Geese,” on page 38!

You can read the issue online or down load a PDF copy for free; finely printed and bound paper copies are available for $17.00 a copy at the Kelsay Books webite. (My own poem appears on page 104.) It always feels like a real achievement to be published in the pages of this journal. Reflecting back, I am pleased that the title poem for my first collection of poetry, “Still Life with Poppies,” appeared in The Orchards inaugural edition in August 2016. In the seven years since, though I can hardly believe it, they have accepted 19 poems (and rejected scores of others, of course!) Even more important, this journal has introduced me to the art and craft of dozens of poets I respect.

Happy Reading! Happy Holidays! Stay Warm!

Icy Web, Icy Eave (Leslie Schultz 2016)