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 East and 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.