As When Waking

Reviews / Votes

"I have eagerly anticipated the arrival of these poems, and now here they are, for all of us, shimmering and satisfying. In As When Walking, Schonning offers us language at its most incandescent. Sweet sweet truths in poem after poem. Gentle and yet irrefutable. Page after page of wicked smart turns of phrase. What a book! What a poet!" -- Camille Dungy, author of "America, A Love Story" "Alphabet as cosmology is an idea at least as old as Kabbalah, and here Schonning cycles through abecedarian combinations and permutations that spell the world as he knows it. A praise song to creation accrues through these pages made luminous by constraints that reveal a maker of deep tact and unwavering faith in language. Both elegant and gentle, and effortless in its virtuosity, As When Waking is a first book of rare formal mastery and metaphysical grace." -- Brian Teare, author of "Poem Bitten by a Man" "In As When Waking, Schonning delves into English with great attention, discovering, even within syllables, a spirit of sound and a forecast of cadences that are entirely refreshing and undistorted by irony. Schonning is a poet of extraordinary, unguarded candor and deserves our trust." -- Donald Revell, author of "Canandaigua" "Part love letter to the alphabet, part alphabet's love letter to us, Schonning's miraculous debut is one where miracle is nothing more and nothing less than opening our eyes-as if for the first time-after what had seemed an endless sleep. With a mystic's faith that word still conjures world, a musician's ear, and a child's sense of wonder, Schonning teaches us the one word we most need to say, a word so simple it's easy to forget: yes. These abecedarians say yes, brightly." -- Dan Beachy-Quick, author of "Variations on Dawn and Dusk" "Schonning takes up a popular and time-honored poetic constraint: an English abecedarian. It is within the seeming simplicity and accessibility of the form that his innovation, improvisation, surprise, and risk find their most well-appointed playgrounds. Looping through the alphabet, Schonning deftly shows us the opportunities we let slip when we stop at z. There are amazements, wonders, and magics in this collection." -- Douglas Kearney, Phoenix Poets consulting editor and author of "Optic Subwoof"