THE VERY SELECTED: MICHAEL SCHMIDT 

Michael Schmidt - literary critic, anthologist, poet, translator, novelist, publisher

BUY FROM SMITH/DOORSTOP
BUY FROM HIVE

The Very Selected: Michael Schmidt
Smith/Doorstop, 2017

A selec­tion, made by the poet, of 35 poems from across his whole career. A fine dis­til­la­tion of and intro­duc­tion to his work.

‘In an age when instant access­ib­ility counts for far too much, Schmidt offers the old-fashioned virtues of solid crafts­man­ship, lin­guistic pre­ci­sion, and aware­ness of writing in a poetic tra­di­tion reaching far back into the past. Sometimes too he writes with enga­ging dir­ect­ness, as in “Agatha”, recalling a child­hood friend­ship, the girl who sat on the play­ground wall: “I look up at your swinging soles and still I love you. / I want to tie your right shoe lace and kiss your shin.” The finest love poem in the col­lec­tion is “His father was a baker …”, written of his partner, the son of a baker in Oaxaca.’
– Roger Caldwell, London Grip Poetry Review