Late Winter Blues

By William Schulman

I offer my book of poems as a union of words and images from cover to cover. Artistically, I also include graphic examples of my personal print-making, such as lithographs, lithosketches, etchings, woodcuts and drawings to join my metaphorical language describing incidents from various points in my personal life. The reader will discover words and images strongly verbally/visually cemented.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503580411

William Schulman

Willie Schulman was born in Winnipeg, Canada in August 1929. He migrated to Milwaukee in 1950, just after a major Red River flood. His first American stop was a day long visit to the Art Institute of Chicago and to the School of The Art Institute because of his interest in Art. He was amazed at the Institutes collections and became dejected by the power of their great paintings, especially their French modernists. His visit to the school reinforced the reality that he couldn't afford it. With eight dollars in his pocket he bought a ticket on the North Shore Line to Milwaukee where he was afforded lodging by his aunt. It took six decades later to realize that the accumulation of Willie's life history is but a chiaroscuro evaluation in pulses of light and dark of a billion paintings, a zillion drawings and a scattering of wordlets that filtered through my brain while alternating between Artist and Poet mode. A more contemporary self-description would describe that I lived in a Bi-Polar world in a Bi-Polar century. The strum of living as any type of Artist/Poet became sandwiched and layered between Ecstasies, Perfect storms, and Alberta Clippers and only offered changes and instabilities as if I were caught in a huge, Jovian sandstorm composed of Graphic Minutia and Tinkling Words that settled into my last life's resolve to aim Higher, Live Longer, and return in the Guise of William Blake rather than 'Little Willie'? Come and decide which Willie is before you?

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by William Schulman.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2015910035

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5035-8040-4

               Softcover       978-1-5035-8042-8

               eBook            978-1-5035-8041-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

All people depicted in the artwork presented are mine, William Schulman and represents imaginative, artistic images that are not portraits of any real people.

Rev. date: 07/15/2015

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

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Contents

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My Studio

Dear Ross

Time

On Douglas Cumming’s Birthday

Traveler’s Thoughts On the Road to Monet

Fall

Crumbs

Times

Natalia’s Journey

Nausea

Reflections

Ennui

Anxiety

Silence

Boa

Blackbirds

Moon

Rabid Raisins

Bear

Random Thoughts

The Edge

Thoughts Induced by a Cool Glass of Beer at the End of a Hectic Day.

Figure/Ground

Craft is Measure

Litho

Ecological Racism

They Laid Old Abe Out This Morning

Late Winter Blues-February Be Gone.

Frozen Jews

A Bleaching Moon

Ba Ba

Refugees

Pack Ice

Flags

Adam’s Spine

Washington’s Birthday

Milwaukee

Gerontion

On Douglas Cumming’s Birthday - 2

The Visit

The Forager

Eight Days

Faith

Snow Geese

Community

Wilma

Remember Roger Menigo

Night Hawks

Visions

Dry Winter

Snow

The Vigil

Dusk

Dead Painting

Near the Edge of Day

Edges of Life

The Anniversary

To Young Poets

Forever

The Dreamer

Day

Judgment

Criticism

Exodus

March Advent

The Fence

Sacred Vows

My Remembrance Tea

Dedication

Dearest Shirley,

After fifty-nine years of marriage and thirteen duo Art Exhibitions together, I invite you to participate in our fourteenth exhibition during 2017. Although dates have not been firmly set, and knowing that you haven’t painted since 2007 with the onslaught of Alzheimer’s robbing you these last ten years, I have saved a dozen of your finest paintings and feel joyful that you will be hanging next to me again. I also warmly dedicate this book of poetry ‘Late Winter Blues’ from which I shall read to you nightly. Your continued love and support has given me the courage to meld word and image into this manuscript.

Love William

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My Studio

It took me nineteen years

to fashion a studio.

I built it

image upon image,

in a mind starved for pragmatism.

It stands out there

full to the brim,

packed with three thousand five hundred

still life arrangements.

There doesn’t seem to be

any room left for me.

What the hell.

I’m too practical now.

I sell only to visionairies.

image%203.jpgBinder1-3.jpg

Dear Ross

Begin-

In essence, shyness of fear exalt my inability to express.

What verbal calisthenics might be

precursor to fluidity

and, or clarity?

Like blank spaces,

a denouement waiting to be felt,

words often fail to pluck the visceral twinge

it is called upon to play.

Instead, the body involutes-gestures, twitches;

pulsations and unrefined tremors assault the