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
The Summer 2019 issue ofThird Wednesday is out now, and it is again full of the depth and variety for which it is known.
I was delighted by the elegantly icy concrete (or shaped) poem by Northfield’s own Rob Hardy titled “Icicles,” and I was intrigued by a four-sonnet sequence by Jennifer A. McGowan, the feature poet for this issue who is based in the U.K.
And–because I had submitted to their third “One-Sentence Poetry Contest”–I was especially interested to read the winning entries. My submission did not win, but I would not have written it without the impetus of the contest. It sprang from a childhood memory, discussing Shakespeare, very briefly, with my computer-scientist father. I was honored that Third Wednesday included it in their group of “considerable merit.”
As I have come to expect, this issue has me thinking outside my usual boxes about poetry, prose, and images. Just to share a bit of that, here are some of my favorite classic poems–quite different poets, subjects, moods, and diction–that I am now viewing through the lens of one-sentence construction–why didn’t I notice this aspect before?
Now, I suspect, I will look for that single full-stop–in terms of sense and punctuation–as I read the work of others. I know that I shall be consciously considering the limits of the sentence as I construct new poems.
Do you have a favorite one-sentence poem? If so, please let me know! If not, do consider trying your hand at one this summer!
The newest issue ofThird Wednesday is out. Once again, I am dazzled by so many poems in its pages and proud to have one of my own included. In this issue, too, I have been especially impressed with the photography.
In the Spring 2019 (Vol. XII, No. 2) issue, I find it harder than ever to cite favorites — but I will anyway. Take a look at Steven Deutsch’s poem “Sam and Saul” about twin musical prodigies; or the frozen lake shore landscape of Scott Lowery’s meditative “Vacancy;” or Jeanie Mortensen’s look at the discrepancies between literature and life in “Dick and Jane;” or Ted Kooser’s consideration of time in “Red Stilts;”or Kathryn Jacobs’s startling perspective in “Calling All Lemmings.”
Like the poetry, the photography in this issue kept surprising and delighting me. My favorites range from the lyrical juxtaposition of a flower and an open book called “Birth” (by Fabrice Poussin) and a study of dunes and sky called “California Dreaming (also by Fabrice Poussin) to the subtle view of exhortatory texts plastered on a gated driveway and house called “Signs” (by Gary Wadley), to — maybe my favorite of all — a head and shoulders portrait called simply “Robert” (by David Jibson.) This one is arresting because it is at once utterly contemporary and positively classical, as though a Roman philosopher visits and observes contemporary complications with earned detachment.
My own poem, titled “Poem in Which I Try, Very Hard, to Do My Own Bidding,” was inspired by a poem by William Butler Yeats called “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” Perhaps, like me, you have memorized this gem? My own poem doesn’t echo so much the form of the poem as the way in which the heart can be split in its desire to live in two different places or modes at the same time, while recognizing the need to somehow integrate both rather than to choose.
Thank you for allowing me to share these thoughts with you! Leslie
"When I first caught sight of Mt. Shasta, over the braided folds of the Sacramento Valley, I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine, and I have not been weary since." - John Muir, 1874
Vacuums can appear as swirls on the distant horizon, or, all of a sudden, open at our feet, spin, pull us in.
Beauty, power, and danger: a trident of transformation pierces us, and we flip like caught fish.
Now, at the advent of tornado season, perhaps we are right to tremble. Change spirals in, never easy or complete.
We hang in flux, dynamic as clouds circling a sacred mountain, painting the sky with flying dragons.
Why does our deep wisdom fly before us? We call, answered by echoes, by rapturous
emptiness. And so, we sit. We become still as the mountain, holding firm, until the storm
passes, the green air departs, and we are flooded with peace as potent as sunset-colored wine.
Leslie Schultz
Photo: John R. SoaresPhoto: John R. SoaresPhoto: John R. SoaresPhoto: John R. Soares
Thanks for these incredible images go to the blog “Hike Mt. Shasta” which includes many other images and resources for visitors. The photographer, John R. Soares, is a lucid and lyrical writer, and the well-known author of hiking guides for the California region. His books can be purchased on Amazon.
