Tag Archives: Leslie Schultz photography and poetry

April 29, 2024 Red Wing Arts Events: Poet-Artist Collaboration Yesterday & Poetry Reading on Sunday, May 5, 2024 from 1-3 p.m. at the Depot!

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A true highlight of this National Poetry Month happened yesterday afternoon for me in Red Wing, Minnesota. I read my poem, “A Gesture of Peace,” at the juried 23rd annual Poet-Artist Collaboration hosted by Red Wing Arts. On a rainy April day, the rooms of the Depot were filled with light and color and energy and good will–and amazing art, both literary and visual, all in conversation with each other.

Leslie Schultz in Red Wing (Photo: Timothy Braulick)

Below is the text from my poem, along with a few snaps from the afternoon. The full-color chapbook for the event, featuring all the poetry and images of the visual art, and statments by poets and artists is splendidly designed and printed. Contact Red Wing Arts if you would like to purchase a copy–it is a lovely showcase and a keeper. And if you are in Red Wing, you can see the poems and art displayed, side-by-side, anytime the Depot Gallery is open, through June 9, 2024.

A Gesture of Peace
	For Kazuhiko Watase


My friend has been folding cranes.
Prayer flags of thin colored paper
transform under his fingers
into gentle shapes of longevity.

Walking in the mountains
above Albuquerque, he finds
dried cactus spines—light,
hollow, strong—brings them home.

Now he is threading a needle,
stringing lines of cranes 
into trembling flocks, each hanging
from the thinnest support,

each flock an aerial ballet
of yellow and blue birds fluttering—
like the silk of the Ukrainian flag,
alive in the war-tattered sky.


Leslie Schultz
“A Gesture of Peace Offering” by Sandy Bot-Miller

I was impressed by the design and great skill of Sandy Bot-Miller’s art, inspired by my poem, as well as by her words: “Ironically and sadly, I completed this weaving on the exact anniversary date that Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago. I primarily concentrated on using the symbolic and meaningful cultural blues and yellows in the Ukranian flag, as well as the folded origami crane shape, as I created a response to the poet’s “A Gesture of Peace” poem. The poet’s haunting, but moving, image of yellow and blue birds fluttering…alive in the war-tattered sky”is what I emotionally focused on while creating this 23-inch circular weaving.”

“Here and Gone” Sculpture in Aluminum and Granite by Jon Kamrath; in response ot William Quist’s poem “Behind You, Somewhere”
Poet Casey Patrick reading “I Wanted First to Tell You How Long It’s Been, But of Course”
“Blue Heron”; Watercolor on YUPO, by James Turner, in response to Patrick Cabello Hansel‘s poem, “The Great Blue Heron Blesses Powderhorn Lake”
Florence Dacey reading “The Last Garden”
“Porcus Spina”; Found Materials and Quills by Matt Quinn, in response to the poem “Harvesting Porcupine Quills–Road Kill” by Georgia Greeley

Upcoming Poetry Reading:

Next Sunday, I will participate in a reading with seven other poets who participated in the 2024 Poet-Artist Collaboration. I am so excited to hear more of each person’s work and to be able to share ten minutes of my own. The event will flow as follows: Introductions by Heather Lawrenz, Assistant Director of Red Wing Arts, and then readings by Paul Schaefer, Ira Frank,  Bill Quist, and Elizabeth Weir; following a short break, readings will continue with me, Jorie Miller, Walter Cannon, and then end on the high note, with poems by Joyce Sutphen. Joyce, a former Poet Laureate for Minnesota, was the poetry juror for the Poet-Artist Collaboration this year and opened yesterday’s event with a reading of one of my favorite poems, “Naming the Stars.” She is also the author of the poem on the banner displayed on the outside of the Depot, “Chickadees.”

If you can join us, that would be amazing! You can find directions on the Red Wing Arts website.

Joyce Sutpen, Poetry Juror, 2024 Red Wing Arts Depot (Photo: Timothy Braulick)

Along Red Wing’s river drive, I spotted this amendment to a traffic sign–some of my favorite graffiti ever. I hope today you spot some unexpected sign of love, hope, and peace. LESLIE

“Share the Love Amendment”, Red Wing, Minnesota (Photo: Leslie Schultz)
Leslie Schultz, Outside the Depot, Red Wing Arts (Photo: Timothy Braulick)

April 28, 2024 New Poem “Crusadering”

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Highway 61 Revisited as a Comic Book Page (Photo: Leslie Schultz0
Crusadering
	for Lynn


No need for Gotham searchlights on the highway.
Full sun shines down upon this Batmobile,
this shiny purple pickup truck on its way
somewhere, with something epic to reveal.

“DKN1GHT” is stamped on plates from Dairyland.
The tailgate sports a spooky cityscape,
with cauled crimestoppers standing hand by hand, 
taller than buildings, masked, and wearing capes.

Silvery bats with outstretched wings adorn
the tailgate and the pristine trailer hitch.
A plushy Batman bounces up to warn
all evil-doers to supress the itch.

It costs a pretty penny, you could say,
to illustrate how crime will never pay.


Leslie Schultz

This weekend is all about traveling along the Mississippi River for us–to Trempeauleau and to Red Wing for family celebration and for poetry. This poem, written earlier this spring, was inspired by sonnets galore, by a trip to Winona that Tim and I took last July, and by my friend, Lynn, a poet who lives in NYC, the real Gotham.

I hope that your own journeys contain some unexpected sight before their safe conclusions!

LESLIE

Garden Paths in July 2023 (Photo: Leslie Schultz)

April 22, 2024 Celebrating All the Poetry of the Earth and New Poem, “Terracotta”

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Musée de l’Homme, Paris (Photo: Lynn Sara Lawrence)

I had hoped to be able to write at least one new poem during this National Poetry Month 2024, and I did. The poem below, written for Earth Day, reflects on how we are all made of earthern materials, just as all the creation myths describe. Millenia older than writing, and still a forceful way for young humans to mark their presence, the hand print will never lose its power for either the maker or the viewer.

Terracotta


Handprints on cave walls splay,
outlined with iron oxides—
red, white, black &
yellow ochre, charcoal, clay.

Human touch everywhere:
yes, notice, too,
we are each signed, stamped
vessels of earthenware.


Leslie Schultz

Cave at Tito Bustillo, Asturias, Spain (Photo: Lynn Sara Lawrence)

I am grateful to Lynn Sara Lawrence for sharing photos with me–and now here–from her travels to ancient sites and museums in Europe that safeguard and interpret early art. (Note: her photographs are of facsimilies on display, not of actual cave art, which is carefully protected.) I had not heard before of Musée de l’Homme in Paris, and now wish that I could see their current exhibtion called “Préhistomania.”

I hope that today you find a way to make your mark while also living lightly–and light-heartedly–on our shared Earth.

LESLIE

Me, in Northfield’s Central Park, helping to decorate Booker the Book Bus in 2007 (Photo: Julia Braulick)

April 21, 2024 A Preview of GERANIUM LAKE: POEMS ON ART AND ART-MAKING, Part VIII and Poem, “Zinc”

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The final section of Geranium Lake is titled “Roadside Attraction.” It contains poems about what might be termed outsider art, from haute coutre to the fiberglass statue of the Jolly Green Giant or the simple design of the oriole feeder above. Innovation, inspiration, and good design can be found all around us. I, for one, do regard these one-of-a-kind objects as art.

Zinc

	for Corrine


Years ago, my now-deceased neighbor
set out small zinc dishes, fitted
them into shallow depressions she routed out 
into the wood of her back-porch railing
before filling them with purple jelly.

She had made the jelly, too,
from fruit of the crabapple tree at the front
of her house. She was set on enticing
the orange wink and blur of northern orioles
to this feeder of her own design

again, that spring, when she’d called me to bring
my fitful camera. We waited, talking
softly in the green-shadowed garden.
None of the orioles came that afternoon,
but her own nature, the sweetness of intention,

pierces me now from behind my chance image, 
this still-glossy photograph: a churned
surface of red-violet jelly, like a sea storm
at sunset, and one delirious drunken wasp,
diving headlong, accepting the sublime dish.

Leslie Schultz
Corrine and Peanut

This concludes the preview to Geranium Lake. Later this summer, when the book is published, I will make an announcement here. Thank you for allowing me to share a first glimpse with you. It isn’t enclycopedic work on art–there are no poems in Geranium Lake inspired by film, fiction, dance, or drama, for instance–but I have enjoyed putting this collection together. Perhaps someday, in another book, I will have other poems that reflect and consider other forms of art and art-making. In any case, I shall keep my eyes open and my pencil ready!

Meanwhile, I hope you will see art in expected, and unexpected, places–today and everyday!

LESLIE

April 20, 2024 A Preview of GERANIUM LAKE: POEMS ON ART AND ART-MAKING, Part VII and Poem, “Sunday Postcard to the Past”

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(Photo: Free Stock by T. Royce Xan)

As many of you already know, I find postcards evocative, and often they are catalysts for my poems. (As I am, for the most part, a reluctant traveler, I find this interesting. I will say that most of the postcards I purchase are in museum shops, and most of the weekly postcards I have published here have been images from my own small orbit–go figure!)

Section VII of Geranium Lake is devoted to the art form of photography.

(Photo: Leslie Schultz)
Sunday Postcard to the Past



Sited by Giotto, best viewed from the east,
as sun rises over the green-rimmed bowl
of Florentine hills, you, bell tower, stand
alone in your old, sacred precinctneighborhood,
lofty as spent granary, looming on the prairie,
or a rusting factory chimney. Sonic silo, housing
seven named bells, we climbed your four hundred
steps sometime in the last gone century.

It was early. We were happy, younger,
open to every view. You, campanile,
dressed in spumoni marble appliqué
without, were rough-hewn within: gritty, dim,
stronger than centuries or human life.
I remember–at each stage, as we climbed–
looking down through your center: your timbers
black as iron with age, your bells silent.


Leslie Schultz

This poem was originally written for National Poetry Month, on Earth Day in 2018, and was published on Winona Media. HERE is the original post–published with other photographs I took on that trip.

P.S. I once attended a Minnesota Humanitis Commission gathering in which Kenneth S. Brecher was the keynote speaker. He described his unusual memoir, in which he uses postcards from his collection to recall pivotal moments from his life, called Too Sad to Sing: A Memoir with Postcards (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, NYC, 1988.) My own copy is either in hiding or on the lam, but I recall this work with great affection. I believe it is currently out-of-print, but if it crosses your path, it is worth a look.