Lit Mutt Test

In Lilith Walks we read how Susan Schultz, Hawai‘i’s celebrated and (dogged) literary experimentalist, reacted to the daily challenge of walking her pooch while rational down a gantlet of Trumpeting, COVID-denying, conspiracist neighbors.

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Is Kāne‘ohe the punchiest neighborhood on the island?

You could argue it. I would.

It’s the home of Castle High, the school that my stepfather, two siblings, and a long list of cousins never graduated from. Poet and publisher Susan Schultz lives there, and while this may sound odd at first, Susan is tough. If publishing challenging experimental poetry for twenty-two years doesn’t prove that, there's her new book, Lilith Walks. 

It's a walk through a human minefield with only a poi-dog mix for company.

Obviously, when a pandemic hits, everyday life shifts dramatically. However, some routine tasks must continue to be fulfilled. Groceries must be purchased. Kids must be fed. For most dog owners, dogs must be walked. Susan Schultz’s Lilith Walks is a collection of her observations and conversations with her neighbors and fellow dog walkers, during what has been one of the most tumultuous eras in this country’s history—the Trump and Covid years.

The book, less a meditation and more a series of observational accounts, is filled with eye-catching juxtapositions. The majestic Ko‘olaus shadow townhouses, the graves of Temple Valley, and a growing population of feral chickens. The mundane task of dog walking in clement weather frequently devolves from friendly, idle conversations to flat-out hostility.

Schultz is unapologetically anti-conspiracy theory, anti-Trump, and pro-CDC guidelines. She occasionally wears her Obama ’08 tee shirt when she walks Lilith, a dog of mixed and unknown breed, and she often dons a St. Louis Cardinals hat. When reading this book, it’s impossible not to think that, like a gang member, she’s deliberately showing her colors and almost cruising for trouble in Windward side suburbia. Among her neighborhood adversaries are a Hawaiian and Caucasian pair who work the guard shack at Valley of the Temples Memorial Park & Crematory, and a man who walks a one-eyed dog named Rosie. When the guys at the guard shack insist that hospitals are putting patients on ventilators to make money, Susan cannot contain her outrage:

“THEY PUT PEOPLE ON VENTILATORS BECAUSE THEY ARE DYING,” I hear myself yelling. “THEY ARE NOT PUTTING PEOPLE ON VENTILATORS TO MAKE MONEY!”

To her credit, Schultz is self-aware throughout. She knows that at times she can be judgmental and catalyzes these conflicts. She can be very Kāne‘ohe. But often, she walks away. Sometimes she vents. She strives for but occasionally fails at equanimity. She’s honest about that. What struck me more than the sporadic bombastic encounters depicted in the book are the quiet, sad moments. Schultz is hyper aware that life is not going well for a number of her neighbors, that not only are the years 2017 to 2021 full of political divisiveness, but it’s a period of declining economic, social, and mental health:

“When I got home, I had an answer to my question from a woman I know who lives up the hill. Her court is afflicted with troubles: the elderly couple and their mentally disabled daughter who are essentially imprisoned in their home down the stairs by the son; an alcoholic who lives with his mother and has a lot of guns; the man who used to beat his puppy and scream horrible things at his son. An abuser, but like so many of them, quite charming.”

Lilith Walks, however, is not all doom and gloom. We catch glimpses of Schultz’s young adult children, who are both kind and well-adjusted, which perhaps serves at subtle reason to be cautiously optimistic about the future. There’s also Lilith herself, a charming dog who braves these walks with a mix of indifference, aloofness, joy, and energy. In one poem, Schultz realizes that she’s run out of poop bags and encounters a man walking his two big dogs. Her gladly gives Susan three bags and says, “Dog owners are like cigarette smokers, always bumming off each other!”

The reader catches glimpses of comraderie (or maybe tolerance?) among the dog walking community and the townhouse complex in which Schultz resides. There’s one neighbor who sprays her chihuahuas with a water bottle and “talks to them loudly as if they’re difficult people” to get them to behave. There’s a seventy-seven-year-old jazz audiophile who walks a dog named Murphy.

But death feels like the most consistent motif here, which makes sense considering many of these walks take place at a cemetery during a pandemic:

“I took Lilith on a walk between sieges of rain. My neighbor had her wide-brimmed tan hat on, but didn’t answer directly when I asked how she was. On Sunday, she died.”

This is a good example of Schultz’s writing style in this, her latest book. It’s direct and subtle at the same time. Underneath images of gardens and graves persists a frequent disappointment in humanity. It’s not a discontent that springs just from the political—there’s a sense that Schultz wishes people would just be kinder and take care of each other more. It doesn’t seem like a big ask, but nowadays, after a scattered retreat from a pandemic and the brimming of animosity between neighbors, it feels like the biggest ask to make.

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Banner image by Little Plant.

Susan M. Schultz, having retired from the University of Hawai‘i, now walks Lilith and takes photographs on O‘ahu and the Big Island. She is author of many books of poetic prose, including Dementia Blog and “She’s Welcome to Her Disease”: Dementia Blog, Vol.2, (Singing Horse Press), as well as several volumes of Memory Cards. Her most recent book is I Want to Write an Honest Sentence, from Talisman. For over 22 years she edited and published Tinfish Press.