“These deeply satisfying poems, with their lush images and fluid sound movements, unfold in elegance, settling the spirit. In every stanza, Schumann’s honest voice feels compelling and humble—nothing forced, nothing labored. What a treat.”
—Naomi Shihab Nye, chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (2010–2015). Author of 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East and Voices in the Air.
“Tina Schumann’s Boneyard Heresies bridges the gulf between the living and the dead. One imagines the divide to be insurmountable yet these poems with their vast imagination, bravery, and power of description demonstrate ‘how ... the actual / and the evoked converge.’ These poems are lived-in, copious with earthly things, tangible with the ‘reverberations of other lives.’ They travel, yet they reside comfortably in the in-between, the limbo, the hiatus, and, in turn, through memory, dreams, evocation and storytelling, they transcend.”
—Joseoph O. Legaspi, author of Threshold (CavanKarry Press) and cofounder of Kundiman.
“What I admire most in Praising the Paradox is the resilience throughout, and an awareness of the common world that both comforts and devastates. These poems navigate a landscape of loss where what goes on is the sway of stoplights, the waitress with her coffee-pot suspended in mid-air, the everyday moments that gather momentum and make a life. These poems celebrate the small gestures, carrying pain alongside joy, reminding us we are alive.”
—Dorianne Laux, author of The Book of Men and Facts About the Moon. Winner of the Paterson Prize and the Oregon Book Award.
“Schumann's poems address the big questions successfully because the poet is honest in her self-reflective moments, rigorous in her moments of intellectual parry, playful linguistically, and keen in her perceptions of those off-the-radar states of being that are so tricky to catch in an accurate way.”
—Lia Purpura, author of It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful (Viking/Penguin) and finalist for the National Book Award.