Boneyard Heresies
2025 Moon City Press
Winner of the 2024 Moon City Press Poetry Award
“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. —JOSEPH O. LEGASPI, author of Threshold (CavanKarry Press) and cofounder of Kundiman.
Praising the Paradox
2019 Red Hen Press
Finalist in the National Poetry Series and the Julie Suk Award
“Tina Schumann’s Praising the Paradox is a rich guidebook for a life—a grand companion. 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— ‘what radiant resignation / to be so much / less than I / could have ever hoped for’—offering largeness of vision, grace, and enormous reading pleasure. ‘I simply left / blank spaces along the way; an ellipse here, a dash there.’ Nothing forced, nothing labored. What a treat.” —NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (2010–2015) and author of 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle Eastand Voices in the Air.
Two-Countries: U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents (Flash Memoir, Personal Essays and Poetry)
2017 Red Hen Press
Winner of a 2018 bronze medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards for Multicultural Non-Fiction.
The newest addition to the Red Hen Press Anthology Series, this collection of flash memoir, personal essays and poetry is edited by the adult child of an immigrant born and raised in the US. The collection contains contributions from seventy writers who were either born and/or raised in the US by one or more immigrant parents. Their work describes the many contradictions, discoveries and life lessons one experiences when one is neither seen as fully American nor fully foreign. Contributors include Richard Blanco, Tina Chang, Joseph Lagaspi, Li-Young Lee, Timothy Liu, Naomi Shihab Nye, Oliver de la Paz, Ira Sukrungruang, Ocean Vuong and many other talented writers from throughout the US.
Requiem: A Patrimony of Fugues
2017 Diode Editions
Winner of the 2016 Diode Editions Chapbook Contest
"Few poets make ideas as tactile as Tina Schumann. At once readily accessible and piercingly ambiguous, Requiem: A Patrimony of Fugues presents both the heartbreak and the epiphanies involved in caring for a beloved parent who is gradually fading into self-eradicating dementia. Each deeply elegiac poem stands on its own while serving as yet one more critical juncture in this most remarkable sequence. The volume astonishes not simply because of its consistently remarkable phrasing or its myriad musical nuances, but because of the inventive line-by-line composing and the manifold interpretative possibilities on every page. Schumann's achievement is that the brilliant verse rendering of her ministrations calls us back to her daughterly devotion over and over." —KEVIN CLARK, author of Self-Portrait with Expletives, winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Series Book Competition
As If
2010 Parlor City Press
Winner of the Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize
"Tina 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. She refuses to be overwhelmed by the enormity of her task. Her reliance on tonal shifts, formal arrangement and personal accountability make for a collection that strips away the artifices of consolation even as it strives to bless." —LIA PURPURA, author of It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful (Viking/Penguin) and finalist for the National Book Award.
Goodreads review of “As If” by Michael St. Paul.
The cover photo of Tina Schumann’s prize-winning chapbook, “As If,” is
beautiful, direct, and impossible to ignore. The blare of blue sky, the bold white
letters like clouds, the pointed roof near the bottom. The title itself speaks to
possibilities (as if this, as if that) and also gives a nod to a youthful sarcasm (sure, whatever, as if). But in no way are these poems immature or aimless. They are confident, solid, and give way to a momentum, a velocity as if each line of verse therein had jumped right off the roof of that eye-catching cover.
In “As If” we have a poet completely in her element. The voice/tone is consistent,strong, and each poem communicates with the others. Wait, let me rephrase….voice/tone doesn’t seem quite right in describing what we have
here…attitude is more like it. This book dishes it out without being
confrontational, subversion and surprise on every page. The pace/cadence is
superbly controlled by intelligent line breaks (which may surprise the reader as
these lines can be ridiculously long, the poems bulky, yet it’s all masterfully
done), enjambments, and the musicality of Schumann’s diction. She is part
Whitman, part prophet of the Americana. Not many poets I know can be both
heartbreaking and funny, but Schumann manages to walk the line between grief
and guffaw.
Some favorite lines of mine include: “those no-good hours between two and four/ when every failure rushes in–every folly confirmed,” “And 4:00 am / is full of 4:00 am,” “As it is, you make believe–that is, as if,” “I am as flat and dumb as the kitchen floor.” I admit these aren’t even the strongest lines in the chapbook, but they just tickled me. But instead of me quoting Schumann, just go out and buy the book. It's worth it.
Generally speaking, Schumann’s poetry is not exactly “the type” of poetry I read.
But the authenticity of the speaker, the charm and unpretentious intelligence and insight, the sheer gusto…well, I couldn’t help myself, I was caught up in it. This chapbook feels so complete, unified, and sure of itself it almost reads like a full length (which I have no doubt will be forthcoming). It is dense, but Schumann sure as heck isn’t.
If there are any flaws in the work, I would say they come at the very beginning
and the very end of the poems. I’m not overly excited about her titles, and I’m not overly excited about some of her endings. Some poems end on a decrescendo when I feel maybe they could have ended on a high note. Or the endings feel somewhat staccato.
However, this is a relatively minor thing considering the overall strength of the manuscript. I’m sure enough reviewers will disagree with me to make my point null and void; I’m sure Schumann would disagree with me as well. And if she were ever to email me, something tells me she’d convince me I was wrong.