Dream Big, Work Harder Rebecca Schumejda (http://sunnyoutside.com ) PO BOX 441429 Somerville, Mass. 02144) $10.
I always mention production values when I review a “sunnyoutside” book. David McNamara the founder of the said enterprise is trained not only as an editor but as a printer, and the books he publishes are handsome, unique, and detailed. In the current release: “Dream Big, Worker Harder, there is an illustration of an old whiskey bottle with a sprouting flourish of flowers—a nice job by poet/artist Nate Graziano— a sunnyoutside published poet. As far as the text is concerned it is set in Adobe Garamond Pro. In the back of the book McNamara writes: that this type is “based on the roman type of Claude Garamond and the italic types of Robert Granjon, both of which are from the sixteenth century.”
Many of the poems in this fine collection deal with the poet’s concessions to domesticity—the promise of youth versus the realities of being an adult. In the poem “ The Happy Ever After” Schumejda skillfully defines the dichotomy between the different phases in her life: the endless horizons of youth versus domestic routine: “Our dreams did not stretch past the count of our fingers and toes/ Our dreams were poems written Jack Kerouac-style, no hesitations./ Our dreams did not involve a forty-hour work week/ husbands and houses/ births and deaths…
But tonight, the happy ever after involves/ another familiar name in the obituaries/ moonlighting after a full day’s work…/ a husband with heartburn/ whom I haven’t satisfied in weeks…” (11)
There are many well-crafted poems about marriage, the poet’s father, and her relentless quest for meaning in the pedestrian.
Doug Holder/ Ibbetson Update/Somerville, Ma.
