Touchstones by Roberta Schultz

Roberta Schultz’ work is full and ripe and grown up. Her poems make you want to hang something from your rearview mirror, something you, too, can touch and see regularly. Each asks just the right question. She shares childhood memories that fully resonate and poignant scenes of the people we’ll all be some day,. Read deep – and then a little deeper – to enjoy these words. And don’t, whatever you do, chase a bear up a tree while wearing your bear hat.

—Christine Arvidson, author of The Love of Baseball: Essays by Lifelong Fans, McFarland Press.

In Roberta Schultz’s poetry, God tells the other plumbers about the underbelly of the temple; an old man in a puffy coat is the Black Pharaoh; a stone in a shoe connects the human to the divine. Old movie memes and the ancient rituals of Egypt and the Ojibwa blend with the bits and pieces of daily life, our strength, our frailty, how we tell truth, how we betray and are betrayed. What more do we want from a poet?

–Nora Gaskin, author of The Worst Thing