Books
Dark Bird
Poems
In his new collection, Schmidt offers poems that begin and end with an ordinary tree. From this minimalist center, the book conjures a widening trance to explore love, family, politics, philosophy, and old wounds. Acutely observant, ruefully funny, and consistently daring, Schmidt speaks with a voice that feels both contemporary and evergreen.
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Suburban Myths
Poems
Suburban Myths explores not only the myth that is the suburb, an island of domesticity that aspires to exist outside of history, but also the sometimes-whimsical myths we create when the suburb suddenly seems foreign.
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Praise & Reviews
Schmidt casts a unique and playful eye on the lives we live, writing poems that are both insightful and wise. Of special note are his poems about marriage, family, and children, which capture our experiences with an absolutely endearing and charming accuracy. . . .
. . . . these poems are strung like iridescent and nacreous pearls, each carefully composed, each beautifully assembled, each a precious existential liberation.
Michael Glaser
. . . . poems that give us the roar of history and culture embodied in even the simplest experiences: vacuuming the rug, raising the hood of the car.
Barbara Morrison
I was knocked over by Schmidt's first book--Here's this poet observing his other lives: a suburban husband, father, neighbor... unnatural roles that seem to startle him into his own whimsical and delicious imagination.
A man is looking inward at himself,
seeing the forest of the inarticulate.
Those tall pines.
His childhood was unremarkable. Why
does it tower that way above him?
Why, like it might explode?
Why desire, catching in his throat?
The bite of persimmon he can’t cough up.
The old language of love. An underground
river beyond the roots of his tongue.
Why does anger say nothing?
He dreams of children, running
through the forest with sticks, who strike
the trees shouting, Wake up, wake up.
Suburban Myth #12
It comes to you in a dream--
A voice says, Build
a cement driveway. Make it
so many cubits long,
so many wide, using grade A,
silicon-based gravel. . . .
Even though
you have no car, and no
garage to speak of. And--
you have no house. But,
if you build a driveway,
a road may want to swing by.
One morning, a new car
sits there gleaming. . . .
Kendra Kopelke
Edgar Silex
. . . . there is absolutely no way to prepare you for all that Schmidt’s poems have to offer: their acrobatic agility and breathtaking breadth, their wit, and their understanding that comes with a wink and a nod. They are inveterately inventive. They are rich in their connections—to each other and beyond. Nothing should stop you from reading them.
Schmidt takes a living room and turns it into a stage. He can take an ordinary husband and father and turn their spirits—with talent and vision—into actors in an alternate world. He creates characters who become mythic within the everyday. This is an invigorating book by a poet with bracing self knowledge.
Rosemary Klein
Grace Cavalieri