“Eleonore Schönmaier’s [third] poetry collection, Dust Blown Side of the Journey, is the work of a poet who has mastered her craft…featuring a beautifully elaborate intertwining of images…connections continue from poem to poem…akin to recurring melodies or riffs across distinct movements of a composition…poems both captivating and moving.” —Emma Skagan  (read the full article in The Malahat Review)

“Schönmaier is a perfect mix of Nelson Ball’s wonder and brevity along with the breadth and wisdom, experience and vision of a Lorna Crozier or a Sharon Olds.  That is some fine company and Schönmaier is right at home…monstrously good…Reading Dust Blown Side of the Journey is like that first long cool and quenching gulp of fresh spring water after a long hike.” —Michael Dennis Today’s Book of Poetry

At times apocalyptic and other times passionate and intimate, Eleonore Schönmaier’s poems show the beauty of the lived and natural world in both wilderness and urban settings.

A woman hides her love letters in beehives, a cherry tree in full blossom is transported horizontally on a bike, and three crows tap their beaks on a metal door. A grandmother gestures how birds once flew in blue skies, public smiles are outlawed, and a shot-down jet lands in a field of wildflowers. Men from warm countries wear big coats and are falsely suspected of hiding bombs, an indigenous man is forced by police into the trunk of a car, and a stork lands in prison under charges of espionage. In Canada, the northern village of Paradise is under evacuation orders, and in Europe Desmond Tutu steps down from a podium into a crowd of photographers. Over a Belgium lunch Frederic Rzewski talks about his piano concerto A Dog’s Life, and a Dutch dinner is shared with a young refugee boy who laughs joyously.

Reflecting a childhood in the northern Canadian boreal forest, combined with an adult life lived without borders, Eleonore Schönmaier’s vivid and sensual language invites the reader to fully join in and enjoy the journey.

PRAISE FOR ELEONORE SCHÖNMAIER’S

Wavelengths of Your Song

“The fluidity within the poems is matched by the subtle flow between them.  The effect is like that of a symphony with interwoven and subtly varied musical statements, and, as in a symphony, the effect is cumulative.” Arc Poetry Magazine

 

Newly released from McGill-Queen’s University Press

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