A very big thank you to Content Bookstore, especially to reading organizer Ellie Ray, and to all the friends who attended my first reading from Geranium Lake last Thursday evening.
Despite the torrential downpour that began half-an-hour beforehand, it was a really good crowd, both in the store and on Content’s livestream via Facebook. I was buoyed up by all of your friendly faces and your excellent questions and comments afterward.
Thank you!
LESLIE
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.
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
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.”
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.
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
As many of you know, I was born in the frozen part of the year, just a few breaths after all the holidays, at the time when the light is dimmest. I also live in a region prone to ice and snow.
I have found–increasingly so–that by the time my birthday rolls around I feel too tired to enjoy it. And I want to enjoy each launch into a new year fully! Even as a child, I longed for a summer birthday–and have continued to do so for almost six decades now. 2020 is the year I turn 60 years old. I am pretty excited about this! And, as my gift to myself, I am transplanting my birthday from the brrrrrrrs of January to the aahhs of June warmth. This year, and every year after, I am celebrating the years behind and the adventures ahead on Midsummer’s Day, June 21. (My official-purposes date will remain the same but for celebratory purposes–woo-hoo!–there will be the maximum of light, blooms in the garden, and flowing water in the river.)
Here’s to entering my sage years with a new point of view!
(Many thanks to Tim for taking the photographs and overseeing the planting of this prairie sage, to Julia Uleberg for the gift of sage from her garden at Dacie’s, to Marea for the “Birthday Girl” magnet I enjoy 365 days a year, and to all of you for your good company on this journey through life!)
LESLIE
Pontem perpetui mansurum in saecula mundi fecit divina nobilis arte Lacer—
(Loosely translated: “I, Lacer, with my divinely inspired noble art, built this bridge to last forever through the ages of the world.”)
This inscription by the architect of the Alcántara Bridge in modern-day Spain combines the heart-cry of engineers and artists alike. In the case of Gaius Julius Lacer, the reverberation of his cry has lasted longer than most, since the reign of the Emperor Trajan into the modern day. His bridge, his voice, and even his bones, entombed in the small votive temple he included to serve as his crypt, still stand. The bridge still carries traffic over the Tagus River.
Yet modern-day builders, whether of stone or word or image, might hesitate, in our age of rapid change, to echo Lacer’s bold assertion, at least out loud.
A decade ago, I embarked on a year-long photographic study of a nearby bridge that was due to be replaced. A landmark for all of living memory in our area, the Waterford Bridge, just north of Northfield, garnered a “0.0” safety rating after the collapse of the I-35 Bridge over the Mississippi River in 2007. I learned in late summer of 2009 that it was due to be closed to service in September, essentially on its 100th birthday. When I went to look at it I saw holes that permitted clear views of the Cannon River beneath. I also saw that someone had left a cupcake on the bridge’s railing–perhaps to say “Happy Birthday” and “Farewell” in one bite?–and I knew that I was going to document the retirement of the old bridge and the birth nearby of its replacement.
For a decade now, I have wondered if this exploration would someday result in a poem. Not so far, but who knows? National Poetry Month is just ahead, and I again plan to participate in the marathon challenge of writing and posting a new poem every day. Meanwhile, in sorting through materials in my office this week, I recalled this project and thought I would share parts of it here.
So, I began photographing this bridge near my home on the day it closed, on its 100th birthday. Of the more than 1,000 images I took over a twelve-month period, this one–of someone’s birthday cupcake gift to the bridge–was the first photograph I took.
When I was offered the chance, a year later, to propose an idea for a show to the curator at Minnetonka Center for the Arts, I was advised to build the concept around a strong theme. This bridge series lent itself naturally to that call.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Waterford Bridge 2009-2010
Bridges are universal concrete metaphors for linking one realm to another, a crossing over to new awareness. As utilitarian elements of the built environment, bridges unite human ingenuity, structural engineering, and history with the topography and weather than anchors a sense of place.
With this series of photographs my aim is to celebrate the recent transition of the Waterford Bridge in Dakota County. Opened in 1909, this landmark supported both horse-drawn and motorized traffic over the Cannon River for 100 years. Fallen into disrepair, with a safety rating of 0.0, the old iron structure was replaced in 2010 by a concrete bridge of modern design for carrying cars, trucks, and farm machinery. After spanning a century of rapid change, the Waterford Bridge now carries only foot traffic, but it continues to be a symbol of a small but proud community. Its physical placement – on the boundary of agricultural, conservation, and developed land – mirrors the metaphorical quality that all bridges hold.
What surprised me was the graphic beauty I found in the interweaving of this human-built object within a natural landscape. As I photographed the bridge and its surroundings over a period of a year, I saw a dramatic acceleration – a tipping point like an avalanche – of the changes that were slowly taking place all along. These images explore the discrete graphic elements, from rust and spider webs to trees and graffiti, that evoke one specific structure while revealing the ability of time to render everything ephemeral.
Photography for me is visual poetry. Like poetry, this writing with light shares the same compression of image, the same ability to capture a tiny slice of the world which suggests the whole even as it focuses on select compelling detail. I am not interested in exposure as a revelation of an underlying ugliness preserved in the amber of technical perfection. Rather the opposite: photography forces me to look closely at the world, encourages me to see the sometimes stark or atonal beauty I would otherwise miss.
Leslie Schultz is a photographer and poet who lives in Northfield, Minnesota.
My goal for the exhibition was to tell the story of the bridge, and of my year of observing it, in ten images. What is here is a kind of director’s cut–the ten chosen images in order, and a few that didn’t make the final cut.
ORIGINAL TEN
ADDITIONAL FAVORITES
