Mr. or Mrs. Nobody – William Stafford

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

Some days when you look out, the land
is heavy, following its hills, dim
where the road bends. There are days when
having the world is a mistake.
But then you think, “Well, anyway, it wasn’t
my idea,” and it’s OK again.

Suppose that a person who knows you happens
to see you going by, and it’s one of those days –
for a minute you have to carry the load
for them, you’ve got to lift the whole
heavy world, even without knowing it,
being a hero, stumbling along.
Some days it’s like that. And maybe
today. And maybe all of the time.

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Poetry is a species of love

/ Bill Schulz / 1 Comment

Christian Wiman – Our minds are constantly trying to bring God down to our level rather than letting him lift us into levels of which we were not previously capable. This is as true in life as it is in art. Thus we love within the lines that experience has drawn for us, we create out of impulses that are familiar and, if we were honest with ourselves, exhausted. What might it mean to be drawn into meanings that, in some profound and necessary sense, shatter us? This is what it means to love. This is what it should mean to write one more poem. The inner and outer urgency of it, the mysterious and confused agency of it. All love abhors habit, and poetry is a species of love.

I was raped more than 40 years ago. I never told – Larkin Warren

/ Bill Schulz
art awareness campaign concrete

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I’m terribly proud of my friend, Larkin Warren, for telling this horrifying story. I’m terribly sorry that she’s had to live with this for 40 years. 

Why did I keep that secret for so long? I had every reason in the world

Source: I was raped more than 40 years ago. I never told

“So — are we at a watershed moment? Are the revelations, the sorrow, the shame, the defenses, the creepy covert investigations of women daring to speak out, the onlookers who decide who’s a perfect victim versus who’s a questionable one, the survivors who name names (including their own), the men we thought were good guys who turned out not to be — is all this indicative of some kind of magical vanguard that will change the workplace, the home place, the working conditions of women and girls and boys in restaurants, hotels, theaters, summer camps, high schools, offices, even churches?”