Customer Reviews

The Holy Worm of Praise: Poems

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It is always so difficult to way what makes a poem a good poem. Like all fine poems, these should be read again and again rather than explicated. Mr. Schultz writes about everyday things-- a dog's marking his territory, an answering machine, playing solitaire. He is a master of understatement. In the moving poem "Darwin, Sweeping" about an apartment superintendent, Mr. Schultz says "Bernice, his wife of fifty-one years, died last week/and that's why he's sweeping the steps, the walk, the street too." Those lines are just as poignant as Emily Dickinson's "the bustle in a house the morning after death." So many memorable lines in these poems-- how about "before Christ discovered America"? Or a mulatto who committed suicide is described as "born only half out of luck."

There are three related poems apparently written about the poet's mother, "Alzheimer's," "Nomads," and "Apartment Sale" that go straight to the heart. I read them recently while visiting my 83 year old mother as she wandered from room to room looking for something she had just lost-- and found-- and lost again.

These are indeed beautiful, sad poems.