I am very happy to share that Hawai’i Pacific Reviewhas just today published my Shakespearean sonnet, “Hunters,” in their ongoing online journal.
Orion is a frequent visitor this time of year. We can watch this constellation on any clear night from our south-facing living room windows. I am always intrigued by the story-cum-myth backdrops that pattern what we perceive in the night sky, and that preoccupation gave rise to this poem.
Happy sky-watching! Happy reading!
LESLIE
(Photo of Orion by Crushman of Pixabay; used with permission.)
When I first learned about Poet Lore, in 2014,I read a current issue in the Carleton Library. Then, I descended into the stacks and found bound issues. Dipping into these, I found a curious treasure: a hard-bound set of Poet Lore issues from 1918. The work reflects its time, but many pieces transcended the literary fashions of the Great War. They felt fresh and relevant nearly a century later.
I deeply admire Poet Lore’s commitment to poetry; what other journal could claim one hundred years of service on the day that the Berlin Wall came down? More importantly, how many journals continue to stay fresh and relevant, to evolve and yet remain unswerving in their mission to ” Published with the conviction that poetry provides a record of human experience as valuable as history, Poet Lore’s intended audience is broadly inclusive.”
Founded in January 1889 by two ambitious young Shakespeare scholars (and life partners), Charlotte Porter and Helen Clarke, in order to serve as a forum to compare the work of poet Browning, who was then still living, to that of Shakespeare, the nascent journal soon sought to publish new work by living authors. From its early days, it has attracted distinguished work. (Click HERE for more on Poet Lore’s history.)
Today, Poet Lore is the oldest continuously published poetry journal in the United States. I applaud the tradition Poet Lore carries, and I am grateful now to be a small part of it.
I am also completely enjoying–savoring, really–the poems in this issue. I suspect that a reader in a hundred years would say the same. A few–just a few–of my own favorites are Joan Mazza’s “Ephemera”, Erika Meitner’s “Nudie Selfie Ode” (as well as her four suggested writing exercise, which I plan to give a try), and a mysterious prose poem called “To the Uncle I Never Met” by the duet of Joe Fletcher and Chris Murray.
Leslie
(To purchase a copy of the most recent issue, click HERE.)
“Duck with Reflections” (Photograph) by Lisa Yount of El Cerrito, California
Lately, I have been thinking about continuity and longevity. Third Wednesday is now a teenager–no small feat in the world of publishing. (Perhaps this musing has been triggered by a significant birthday of my own? Hmmmm….)
I know that I am very grateful that my friend, Stella Nesanovich, whose own poems have often graced the pages of Third Wednesday, suggested that I submit work here. In the past five years since, I have become a subscriber and a devoted reader of this journal. And the editors have often–though certainly not always–said “Yes” to poems I have submitted to them. The three included in this issue (diverse in tone, subject matter, and form) bring the total number of poems accepted to a full baker’s dozen of thirteen.
More important, my relationship with this gem of a journal has several times sparked new ideas and occasioned new work, and even occasionally encouraged me to see an older poem–first drafted in a different decade–in a new way. This is true of the one of the three they took for this issue. One arrived in first draft form about thirty years ago, one about ten years ago, and one very recently. Does one’s voice evolve within the continuity of one’s life as a working poet? It is a question I am mulling, and that questioning is aided by seeing work from different periods of my life in print, side by side.
As usual, I am keenly interested in the work of other poets, fiction writers, and visual artists in this issue. You will have your own favorites, of course. (And I would love to know which ones you respond to!) For me, the one that struck me most keenly this time is by a young student from the Detroit Public Schools, Reyann Aldais. The poem is called “Who I Am” and begins: “In Arabic, my name means/the door to Paradise.” It is fresh and sure and soaring, and I am very glad to have encountered it through Third Wednesday’s participation in publishing selected work from the InsideOut Literary Arts Project that has fostered and promoted the life-transforming creativity of young Detroit students since 1995.
I hope that your summer is unfolding with serenity after the convulsions of last spring, and I hope that you are finding ample time to read, write, sing, dance, imagine, picture, and dream.
All my best, Leslie
Click HERE to see all the poems in this issue and/or to purchase copies of the print issue.
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.
Earth Day Flag (Designed by Peace Activist John McConnell)
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
Julia and Tim at the Aldo Leopold Home Site in Sand County, WI (Photo: Karla Schultz)Compass Point, Winona Street Labyrinth, Winter
