The Interview

By Rupert Schmitt

Rupert Schmitt has been a teacher and an underground laborer. A full time writer and performance poet he loves water and lives in the Sonoran desert. As a youth while walking a breakwater with Black Mountain poet Charles Olson, ignoring the imposing BMC icon, Rupert scratched the back of a huge angler fish.

He climbed Douglas-firs and big leaf maples with ropes and a chain saw and became an expert in wetlands, Millipedes and toxics. After a brief workshop with Charles Stafford, Stafford said Good Luck. Rupert moved away looking at him. Stafford kept looking at Rupert like a friend at the station to a friend on a departing train.

Rupert Schmitt's poetry interviews cats. Neighs with horses. Is afraid to confront mountains. Confronts God. Tackles Buddhism. Has a grandmother who smells. Is reverent to nature. Irreverent to leaders. Is passionate, eccentric and compassionate. He respects his teachers who have included a master wood carver, a master oil painter, and master poets. His poetry, easy to read and understand, is what it is.

He has had retreats with Malodoma Som?, an African Shaman, Michael Meade a master story teller-drummer, Luis Rodriguez a former East Los Angeles Gang member and Geshe Ngawang Gedung his Tibetan Buddhist teacher who gave him the name of Yeshe. Without his teachers he would be nothing yet he cannot pin down what he learned.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0595526748
• ISBN13: 9780595526741
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Length: 148 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Poems for Lovers of Life

Cat people will love this book. So will people who love nature and the great outdoors and family and people with original minds. Rupert Schmitt captures the relationship of man's spirit to what he might call the Great Spirit, and he does so in a happy, quizzical mood, even when he writes of sadness. As a writer, Schmitt is whimsical, tangential, and utterly charming. He captures many facets of a life lived for its own sake, full of love and the adventure of small events and odd creatures. He looks at the world with wonder, humor, and sometimes anger. Even though not always thorough and disciplined as a poet, and never lengthy, he is always original and always delicious.

The Interview

Critters, Kith and Kin, Teaching, Struggles, The Bush, Non Sense, Prayers, The Heart - herein lies the life and times of Rupert Schmitt, poet, interrogator, student and teacher, lover, friend - a man who has spent a lifetime watching and listening to the world around him - sometimes struggling with the rules and expectations of society, the necessities of the dollar, affairs of the heart, and the confines of time. You will fully enjoy taking a poetic journey with him through the pages of "The Interview" written with wit, humor and creative narration expressing his unique view of the critters and fellow humans who fill his world. On page 85, he writes - "I rejoice when I awake In the middle Of the Night...." Well - why not!

The INterview

THE INTERVIEW by Rupert Schmitt is an outstanding collection of witty , passionate, and sometimes eccentric views of life and the people who have passed through his experience on this slightly imperfect ball we call our world.Done in poetry form, it is delicious and fun! It's a great read ..a true collector's have to have and a perfect gift for those who understand the first sixty years of life as well as those aspiring to that second notch of the belt. Paula Anderson