Talking to Stanley on the Telephone

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

• 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.

  South Bank Poetry