Breath Found Along the Way

54 short poems make up BREATH FOUND ALONG THE WAY by Anne Schneider, formerly of Houston, now of Kerrville, Texas. In the collection's Introduction Mrs Schneider explains the title of both the book and a poem within it as derived from a martial arts teacher's definition, "Tai Chi is the breath I found along the Way." Schneider then implies that her verses reflect experiences found along her way and are, scattered among other ever evolving self-expressive acts, "the sweet exhalation of that breath." *** From her "About the Poet" it is clear that Mrs Schneider's way has included extended stops and tarryings along the way in Houston, Texas, in Catholic schools, Catholic church work, in two marriages (the second happier than the first), two daughters, and personal explorations of yoga, tai chi, chi kung, Reiki, mask-making, doll-making, leadership of the Kerrville Writers Association and writing short stories and verse. *** The narrator of each poem can be interpreted as a determinedly individualistic adult American female in her late 40s or older. Whether there are 54 separate narrators, several or only one is for the reader to figure out. Nor is it self-evident that the narrator is always or ever the real-life author. It seems natural and perhaps intended by Anne Schneider that readers think of the narrator and the author as identical: one real woman with a highly compartmentalized and nuanced, evolving psyche, on an increasingly self-directed journey into ever more self-defined personal fulfillment. ***I recall only one poem that is rhymed, "Christmas Carol." It begins: "It's Christmas in the kitchen/and Grandm's drinkin' wine,/ Mogen David Blackberry,/ inspirin' pies divine." This continues for another 12 short lines, bouncing merrily along in the mood of James Whitcomb Riley's "When the Frost is on the Punkin." Christmas Carol is one of very few entirely happy poems in BREATH FOUND ALONG THE WAY. ***Most of Anne Schneider's poems exude either fear that happiness cannot last, or that mother and family may not always understand the narrator but do well to love her anyway. The narrator is often very thin-skinned, prickly, hates to be judged but weighs everyone around her. *** In longer than most other verses "Jail House Rock" the narrator seems to be mad as hell that for her whole life other people have been telling her what to do and finding her less than perfect when she tries. "What will the neighbors think?" ... "Old friend whines THAT was a secret/ while Father Flynn cross-examines/ Why weren't you attending Mass/ instead of Shaman caves?" A natural enough question put to a once very publicly active lay Catholic who now reads and re-reads Rilke but does not, at least in BREATH FOUND ALONG THE WAY, readily quote Scripture or seem to spend time reading John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila. ***Indeed, the intensely, no nonsense secular, ultra-individualistic, earthy, sensuous nature of these wee but very bright poems is striking. BREATH FOUND ALONG THE WAY does not remind of religious writers like Gerard Manley Hopkins or John Henry Newman. The narrator might instead evoke for some readers the many "seeking" American women of recent decades. For many people, organized religions, including traditional supply-side Christianity with its dos and don'ts and its Cross, no longer work as they once did for searchers after meaning. Many now seek and are sure that they will find a brand new pole star, a new wondrously fulfilling demand-side religion or spirituality and a new heaven on earth. *** The Schneider poems are uniformly chatty and limpidly put. That they are formally divided into lines seems a concession to publishing convention. *** In "Phoenix 2001" a grandmother reflects on the birth of a grandson. He should have been born the day terrorists flew planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center but arrived two weeks earlier into a happier world. Two weeks later a distraught mother asked the boy's fireman father, "Why in the name of God did we bring a child into this world?" *** In "Mama's House" the narrator visits a dilapidating ruin where her mother once lived, "Adrift in rooms empty without her." But in a sense mother is always one of the "old women who never leave home." ***A final selection from among my dozen favorites: "Extravagance." It begins: "A friend calls me exravagant,/ maybe I am. / At 48, I refuse anymore/ to buy cheap toilet paper." This reminds contrastingly of young Rudyard Kipling's poem "My Rival" in which his 17-year old sister Trix during cool summers in Simla, India's summer capital, is jealous of her 49-year old mother Alice who outshines all women at the Viceroy's balls and attracts all the young men. Never mind! Trix will have her revenge one day: "Just think, that She'll be eighty-one/ when I am forty nine!" You, dear reader, can do Trix's very imaginative math in that last calculation. It is hard to imagine Alice Kipling at 48 giving up flirting and looking for a rocking chair in Kerrville, Texas. *** Anne Schneider's BREATH FOUND ALONG THE WAY flashes from time to time with bold insights. It is also tastefully illustrated on front and back covers and throughout the poems by examples from Mrs Schneider's own work in masks and other media. This small 84-page book is carefully put together and should make gracious, thought-provocative reading for many, especially for the apparently growing universe of individualistic American women demanding novel and fresh forms of self-expression. -OOO-