Nine Mile Magazine Fall 2015 (Vol 3, Issue 1)

About Bill Schulz I was born and raised in Maine and now live in Portland on a hill that looks across an old ice pond. Maine natives tend to look at life with a well-earned and somewhat healthy skepticism.

One of the state’s marketing slogans is “The way life should be.” A real Mainer wants to add a line, “...but really isn’t.” Maine is 4th of July on Penobscot Bay, sailboats, blueberry pies, and a crusty old timer in a so’wester hat saying “ayuh,” sure. But for most of us who can’t afford to live the life of visitors to “Vacationland,” Maine can be as hard as granite and harsh as a winter’s day on the North Atlantic. My poems have been grown in this hard, rocky soil; sometimes you get blueberries and sometimes you get potatoes.

I once tried bending birches in the woods off a back road in Hebron, Maine. I was walking with my prep school roommate on a cold and snowy Sunday afternoon, discussing our most recent class on Robert Frost. It seemed like the right thing to do – until we were hanging high off the earth, hands cold and bleeding from the climb, tree NOT bent to the ground “Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair/ Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.” It was a good lesson in both practical prosody and theology – one that I’ve not forgotten.

I hold Master’s Degrees in English from the poetry workshop at The University of New Hampshire and in theology from Nine Mile Magazine Vol 3 No. 1 - Page 43