THE STORIES OF MY LIFE
The Stories of My Life
Smith/Doorstop, 2013
Sheep Meadow Press (USA), 2016
No life follows one convenient thread. The poet finds his bearings through history, biography and fiction, too. Some of the poems emerge from translations, a newspaper article or the Bible. Here is childhood, desire, courtship, survival, old age; Anglo-Saxon, English and other exotic landscapes; battlefields, Alps and ancient cities; a nativity and the communion of saints; and resurrections that include poor Yorick and his graveyard full of skeletons.
‘The Stories of My Life houses a chapel of mysterious devotional poetry. […] in this book, he is in dialogue with what he reads, “exchanges confidence in blood, / telltale and intimate, profane”, loving jousts with many of the world’s great poets, novelists, and thinkers, ancient and modern: Greeks, Pound’s pals, old English, old American, etc., and he writes brilliant “afters” and “froms”, he makes it new […] Born in Mexico, Schmidt rides an invisible Rocinante through his adventures, which include chivalrous roadside and bedside encounters. The reader tags along happily on a donkey, in front, beside, and behind Don Michael.’
– Stanley Moss