The Map is not the Territory

The poems explore states of consciousness triggered by the author's connections to the land where he resides in Central Vermont and the cityscapes that he is intimate with in Brooklyn, New York. They are also informed by his long-time practices of zazen meditation and t'ai chi and his ongoing study of western and eastern philosophy and psychology."Awake and in love with the natural world, these poems merge psychological and spiritual landscapes with rivers, trees, and seasons in vital ways. Schneider's poems are rooted and moving, lingering in and traveling through American towns, flowers, human bodies, and philosophies. With exactitude and vastness, the poems speak to the beautiful strangeness of ordinary things while keeping a sly grin: 'Refuge is swaying / side to side leaning over / on one's black cushion / to cut a loud fart.' We need these grounded, funny, wise and open poems in the world. They show us the vibrancy of a 'gray winter morning' for the first time all over again." -Maya Pindyck, Emoticoncert (Four Way Books) and Friend Among Stones (New Rivers Press) Peter Schneider is a poet and psychotherapist who lives in Brooklyn, NY and Rochester, VT. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AMP: The Journal of Digital Literature (Hofstra University); The Buddhist Poetry Review; Mobius: The Journal of Social Change; The Shot-glass Journal; Kairos; and in the broadside collection, A Midnight Snack. His MFA is from Columbia University School of the Arts and his PhD is in clinical psychology from New York University.