"These are beautiful poems; each one is a gem; each one is sublime, witty, and surprising. It’s as if she has taken the world that we see and experience every day and given it back again, refreshed, alive, and shimmering. Reading her poems reminds me of reading William Stafford and Naomi Shihab Nye, poets who let you see the mystical and the absurd in the everyday, who make you feel a little better about being alive.”
—Nin Andrews
Books & Chapbooks
In Dear Youngstown, poet Karen Schubert delves into stories meant to convey emotional truths about living in Youngstown, Ohio. From the opening poem, "Reading at the Old Ward Bakery" to the ending poem "After the New Yorker Festival," Schubert gently leads you through reminiscence and recall, offers observation, appreciation, and tribute to a city she clearly loves. In her poem "Letter to Youngstown, " she celebrates its diversity.
“Karen Schubert’s I Left My Wings on a Chair takes flight through a series of prose poems that stay afloat with sardonic wit and social satire. Schubert takes on everything from Etsy to Wittgenstein to the many Karen Schuberts in compelling, contemplative, and beautifully wrought vignettes. Russel Edson called the prose poem ‘a cast-iron airplane that can actually fly,’ and these prose poems soar!”
—Denise Duhamel
Karen Schubert’s Bring Down the Sky draws us into the world of the artist, and locates there the deep human impulse for esthetic and moral authenticity. These poems coalesce beneath us, sure footing, a gentle yet powerful literary response to Archimedes’ assertion, “Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world."
"Your poems will try to get away with things. Don't let them."