Poetry sometimes goes its own way, abandoning storytelling and lyric and following instead “the way of language”, discovering for a change what it has to say — more interesting than what the “I” intended.
Fossils and ghosts live in language, etymologies and echoes. An eco-system in itself. You live there in a world rich in creatures, some of them human, that talk in their own ways under the shade of trees.
Michael Schmidt’s remarkable new collection is his shortest and most brilliantly complete and compelling. It bears out Rachel Mann’s comment in a review about the ‘precise and disconcerting magic’ of his language, and reminds us that here is one of our finest poets. More than ever in this pamphlet we see as John Ashbery did a ‘vibrant, radiant and passionate discourse, that is at once earthy and numinous.’
Published June 2026.
What Writers and Critics Think
Age has not diminished Michael Schmidt’s boyish wonder at the world but rather made his bemused questioning of the foibles of its fickle folk all the merrier and more poignant. These are also poems of self-questioning, with Schmidt talking not just to Stanley Moss on the phone at night but engaging with the past (himself as a boy) while addressing himself in the present (still a boy at heart). They are wry, playful monologues puzzling over what can only be unpacked, or more often left equivocal, in the poem itself. Reading this book, we find ourselves in the stimulating company of a poet-conversationalist par excellence, listening to what might feel addressed to us while eavesdropping on what is clearly not.
Neil Astley (on Talking to Stanley on the Telephone)
Michael Schmidt’s poetry deserves more recognition. It is both alert and sensitive to the nuances of language. In his latest collection ‘Talking to Stanley on the Telephone’ Schmidt does not disappoint. Schmidt’s writing is stunning and shows us what poetry can do.
Vibrant, radiant … steeped in modernist tradition (Yeats and Eliot) and questingly new … a passionate discourse that is at once earthy and numinous. – John Ashbery on Very Selected: Michael Schmidt
*
Michael Schmidt is the author of several books of poetry, most recently Talking to Stanley on the Telephone (Smith|Doorstop, 2021). His Selected Poems (Smith|Doorstop) was a PBS Special Commendation. He has written Lives of the Poets, The Ancient Poets and The Novel: a Biography, and he has produced many notable anthologies. He is Editorial Director and Publisher at Carcanet Press and General Editor of PN Review.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.
