Tina Schumann

Description:

Poems about life/loss/childhood/concepts of self and the larger meanings of existence.

This full collection of fifty-six poems reflecting on the concept of self, loss, fragility, and the constructs we must create in order to face the transient nature of life was named a finalist in the National Poetry Series, The New Issues Poetry Prize, The Four Way Books Intro Prize, and others. It was also listed as a “remarkable work” in the Tupelo Press 2012 open submission period.

ADVANCE PRAISE

“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, winner of the Paterson Prize, and Facts About the Moon, winner of the Oregon Book 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

Description:

The newest addition to Red Hen’s Anthology Series, Two-Countries: U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents is an anthology of flash memoir, personal essays and poetry 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 parent. 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.

ADVANCE PRAISE

“When you hold in your DNA two countries—the cultures, the languages, the delicious foods and stories—you embody richness. These writers know on the cellular level many layered ways to live, to struggle, to love. Here are voices we need to hear, writers we need to read. This is a brilliant, timely book, an antidote to divisiveness.” —Peggy Shumaker, Alaska State Writer Laureate and author of Gnawed Bones and Just Breathe Normally.

“In their accounts of assimilation and nostalgia, celebration and resistance, the poets and writers in Two-Countries show that one result of our ongoing national experiment is a rich deepening in our literature. We may be in perilous times as a country, but our writers have never been in more ferocious health —Rick Barot, Author of Chord and recipient of the Rilke Prize and the PEN Open Book Award.