“Hilde Weisert’s quiet, versatile poetic voice, fully at ease in narrative and lyric, is distinguished by vivid accuracy of thought and speech, modest but absolute courage in choice of subject, a dry, sweet humor, and a generosity of spirit that brings me back to her book again and again.”
– Ursula Le Guin
My first poetry collection, The Scheme of Things from David Robert Books, is now available. The book launch reading was at the Sandisfield Arts Center at 4 PM on September 19, 2015 – here’s an update with recordings.
I am grateful to the poet and visual artist Jim Haba for the striking cover art from his cut-out series.
“Worldly, capacious, melancholy, as if old friends were on a walk together, Hilde Weisert’s poems recall and respond to events from Paris to Hungary to Brooklyn. A daughter greets a father in an airport; a woman watches an octopus open a jar; a pianist chooses to play Russian music in America’s cold-war McCarthy era. This poet’s intelligent, quizzical takes on human history (and folly) mix science with philosophy—and pulse to the beat of the American songbook, too. Don’t miss “The Editor,” a poem about writing itself, or “The Payment” with its intimate, yet angled view of daughters, or “Away,” where the poet lures her free-verse heart into a taut sonnet. Hilde Weisert’s sympathetic genius shines in The Scheme of Things.”
– Molly Peacock
“Hilde Weisert’s The Scheme of Things is a compelling and haunting book that explores the many layers of family, friendship, feminism, art ,and the impact of the past on the present. Weisert’s powerful voice is at times wise, wry, worldly, but always compassionate as she takes the reader on an odyssey that includes this country, Paris, and even Hungary, but also the past. Weisert is the consummate poet when it comes to language.I can’t think of another poet whose language is so exquisite, original ,and luminous.”
– Laura Boss
ISBN: 978-1625491510, 118 pages, $19.00
You can see video and hear audio of excerpts from the book here.
Order from IndieBound (which will send the book or list your local bookstore if you enter your zip)
In Western Mass, it’s on the shelves at these outstanding indies:
In Great Barrington, MA: The Bookloft (in Poetry and in Local Authors)
In Lenox, MA: Matt Tannenbaum’s The Bookstore
In Northampton, MA: Broadside Bookshop
Or if you must, order from Amazon, which has one virtue, you can rate it and comment
For some background on The Scheme of Things and poetry in general, please see the Mass Poetry interview.
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Information on my 2012 anthology, co-edited with Dr. Elizabeth Stone, Animal Companions, Animal Doctors, Animal People: Poems, essays, and stories on our essential connections.
Hilde Weisert 