Scant Hours

“Scant Hours guides us through Schmeidel’s poetic worlds. The Early world is marked by war, by violence, by fear, by ‘submarine mines,’ and a ‘many-thousand-year Reich.’ … We see the urgent tasks: to look closely, to weigh words, soft and sharp, to take off one’s armor and allow the skin to sense the individual’s relationship to time: ‘On one day/ […] the sun, rising, / will break through / the skin of the earth and / […] as usual / you’ll / do everything normally / while the ground / under your feet / burns’ (‘Instructions’).

“The lyric voice in Later becomes increasingly inward ... the relationship to the self, love, family, sickness, inner life. In ‘We Exist’: ‘I want to be there again where / there are questions in people’s eyes. […] // I want to be there again / where the sky touches the horizon / and we go freely next to one another: / silhouettes of our finiteness.’ These lines express that we exist not alone, but in plural form. They offer a perspective in which ‘finiteness’ can be identified as a sign of our vitality and freedom.

“Later Still marks the third section of poems. ... Long poems and short ones, brief and extended lines, clear stanzas and loosely grouped lines, associative suggestions and narrative sentences. As if something was ending, running out, some would say; I would say rather: as if something were beginning again. ‘Possible’ ends the volume, testing out possible constellations of ‘yourself,’ and ‘death,’ and ‘laugh,’ ending with ‘died out,’ which is bookended by ‘laughed at,’ and ‘kept laughing.’

“With incomparable sensitivity and linguistic creativity, Stuart Friebert succeeds not only in bringing Elisabeth Schmeidel’s marvelous images and surprising word collages into English; rather, his American English creates a tone that allows the contemporary English-speaking world access to the fine overtones, the voices and moods of Schmeidel’s language.”

—From the Introduction by Thomas Wild

“Many of the poems sail into the dangerous waters of illness, anger, and despair. We had many a conversation about the eroding political landscape of her beloved Austria. She’d order another ‘langen braunen’ (her go-to Austrian pick-me-up), light another cigarette I’d smuggle her in some quantities, and start sketching and scribbling away on café tablecloths …”

—From Remembering Her by Stuart Friebert