Staying Alive

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For those who think that poetry is no  longer being written, have a look at Jason Schneiderman who not only proves that it is alive but that it is also important in that he writes direct poetry and tells it like it is. I was introduced to Schneiderman’s poetry by another dynamic young poet, Robert Walker and I am that much better because of it. The poems are about real things, a real look at our world lyrically presented. The poems look at love, life and death, family, knowledge and deception and they are both funny and sad at the same time.

I found that after reading each poem, I had to stop and think about what I had just read because of what the poem said. Schneiderman does not hold back and the poem about the Holocaust memorial expresses how we feel after seeing a display. The silence that we walk away with after seeing relics of the most horrible period in the history of the world becomes a personal feeling that does not give us a way to think or react. Do we really want to know what these people were thinking as they walked to their deaths? They deserve those private thoughts to be theirs. He then goes on to say how we should react and finally we are told ìto read the names of the deadî and to love them—for many all they had to leave behind were their names. We have never found their bodies and we can only remember them is by what they were called.

Schneiderman also writes about how it is to be a gay boy and coming of age at a very difficult time when the gay population was being decimated by AIDS and Ronald Reagan did not want to hear the word gay. He writes about those gay activists who would not live to see the fruits of their labors and he writes about you and me. His humor is filled with irony and what make you smile or even laugh at one reading might bring tears to your eyes at another reading.

I can continue to quote from different poems so that you can see what pulled me in but then I would rather you be pulled in yourselves. What I will say is that you are in for a special treat as you experience Schneiderman’s joy of life by reading his wistfully sweet poems. You get a real sense of satire and a look at Jason Schneiderman.