April 19, 2022: Newsflash! BLUE UNICORN Publishes My Poem, “The Craft of Poetry”; Spotlight on Robert Frost’s Poem, “Fire and Ice”; Background for My Poem, “Spring Frolic”

Yesterday’s mail brought a welcome envelope containing the newest issue of a favorite journal of mine, Blue Unicorn. As a subscriber, I welcome this journal twice a year because I know there will be something interesting in it that I couldn’t find anywhere else. This issue makes me especially happy to have because it contains my short poem, “The Craft of Poetry,” inspired by Robert Frost‘s masterful and chilling poem, “Fire and Ice.” Frost’s poem, known to most, is another one that I have memorized. Because of that, I think, the sounds of it were simply there, waiting, and that it was this tight net of rhythm, meter, and rhyme that gave rise to my own poem. (I used different rhyme sounds, but otherwise followed Frost’s nonce construction.)

This issue of Blue Unicorn also contains the best statement in a journal I have ever seen on the whole fraught topic of rejection, as well as more that eighty poems. So far I have read only a small fraction but what I have read whets my appetite. It is fun to see work by poets whose work is already known to me (A quick look finds work by Laurence Thomas, “The End of Desire”; Kathryn Jacobs, “Paying Court” and “Human Beans”; Lynn D. Gilbert, “A Sonnet for You and Yours”; John Hart, “It Seems to Me and I”–these last two playful exchanges on shifts in “correct” English usage–Dan Campion, “The Conspiracy”; and Shutta Crum, “Some, Too Indifferent to Spring Wind (for Emily Dickinson), as well as translations (by Robert E. Tanner, Thomas Feeny, and Susan McLean) of work by Alexander Pushkin, Antonio Machado, and Charles d’Orleans.) I know I will read the work in this issue many times over.

Blue Unicorn’s founding editor, John Hart, also shares thought-provoking essays on his poetry blog from time to time as the spirit moves. You can find his essays at Memorable Speech. Modern poetry is a very large tent, and Hart’s lifelong experience as a poet, editor, and critic gives him a rare perspective. His most recent essay succinctly elucidated for me one of my least favorite trends of modern poetry–known as “Language Poetry,” I learned–and also helped me understand just why this kind don’t appeal to me, but also understand its attraction for those who write, publish, and enjoy such work. As a bonus, I love the way Hart puts sentences together.

(Photos: Leslie Schultz)

Background for My Poem for April 19 (emailed to those who requested my personal poem-a-day), “Spring Frolic”:

Many of you know that Tim and I welcomed Stella into our home last month. She is a rescue Poodle-Maltese mix, just over five years old, originally from Houston. She has brought new liveliness into our house, and she just adores Julia and Julia’s guinea pigs, Peaches and Pancake. Although she hates the cold (not being used to it), she loves her walks. She will leap into the air like a trained dolphin whenever anyone dons a jacket. We look forward to warmer weather when we can take her to a local dog park and let her run to her heart’s content. (We have learned that Stella does enjoy sitting on a pillow on a garden chair when we make a fire outside, but she did NOT enjoy the recent spate of hail, pictured above.)

Happy Reading! Happy Writing! Happy Spring! LESLIE

April 15, 2022: Spotlight on Robert Frost’s Poem “Acquainted with the Night”; Background on My Poem “A Fugue of Dark Questions”

Full Moon from My East Window (Photo: Leslie Schultz)

Acquainted with the Night

by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. 
I have been one acquainted with the night.

I think that this poem reads well on the page, but when read aloud it leaps up in a mesmerizing and terrifying shadow play. Frost’s terza rima exploration of uncertainty and spiritual ennui is one that I read aloud so often it has memorized itself in me. It reminds me of the haunting surrealist paintings of Giorgio Di Chirico, especially his “The Nostalgia of the Infinite” (1911-1913, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.)

For me, Frost’s poems have a dark, brooding, incantatory beauty that casts a spell on the hearer or reader. Certainly he was an ambitious man–ambitious in the artistic and worldly senses, both. For these reasons, he seems a fitting pairing with the Shakespearean landscape that cropped up in the poem I wrote today.

Nick Thomas: A handy primer on Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'

Background on My Poem “A Fugue of Dark Questions”:

Yesterday, Tim, Julia, and I were recalling our first college-visit trip. I hadn’t known that Julia enjoyed the tiny and uncomfortable cabin we stayed in on the shore of Lake Erie after our visit to Oberlin and its Conservatory, or that she loved watching that evening, for the first time, reruns of the old television comedy, “Gilligan’s Island,” on a tiny black and white set.

Then, last evening, I read in the latest issue of Vogue magazine about the new production of Shakespeare’s tragic play, Macbeth, starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga that opens in New York City this evening. And I remembered the ambitious fun of reading Macbeth as a family, as a kind of weird trio invoking the Bard’s vistas as we traveled the Midwest. This poem is thinking about that memory, and ideas of ambition and double-edged awareness, as in the word, “fugue,” which has applications in both classical music and abnormal psychology.

Daniel Craig, Ruth Negga to Star in 'Macbeth' on Broadway – The Hollywood  Reporter
Gilligan's Island - Wikipedia

Happy reading! Happy writing! LESLIE