Boneyard Heresies

by Tina Schumann

Boneyard Heresies, Tina Schumann's fourth collection is an investigation of personhood as seen through the prisms of magical thinking, grief, the dreamland of memory and the vagaries of love. These often self-deprecating and at times darkly humorous inquiries are built around a scaffolding of self-portraits, epistles, and elegies. Ultimately, the collection explores the inevitable terminus of all living things, the ironic and faulty constructs of a rapidly moving world and one's place in the human tribe.

85 pages, Paperback

First published February 2, 2025

About the author

www.tinaschumann.com

Reviews

[Maria F Brandt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not a big poetry reader, but I like Moon City Press so picked up this collection. So much here about navigating identity moving into the later years of life, and the various soundtracks that accompanied this navigation for the speaker. Some of my favorite lines: “How do I praise all that is / gone too soon?” and “I can be jolted / by the everydayness of the world, / blindsided while channel surfing / on a Tuesday night of dull television / and suddenly there’s Pete Townsend, / seventy-six and mostly deaf, still windmilling / his pitcher’s arm across the face of a Stratocaster.”

[Charley Melton · Rating 5 out of 5]

the immigrant experience that schumann describes is very different from any other immigrant author i've ever read. i wish i could have found this poetry collection sooner! good to know i'm not the only person still haunted by the tidbits my mother shared with me about her earlier years. that's one of the things i love about reading poetry, it helps me to feel less alone. without works like these, i think i would feel incredibly isolated in my experiences.

it also really spoke to me as someone who lost their parents as well. i'm very glad that i'm not the only person who had dreams about their deceased mother suddenly being alive again and shopping for groceries. death in dreams tends to act like a temporary cold that can be cured. my childhood cat passed away recently, so i've been in mourning. again. this work really inspired me to not feel so bogged down about death and the separation that comes with it. even though i try to console myself with "oh well that's life", for so long i've never felt wholly comfortable with death. i've always felt guilty for being happy to be alive when confronted with death, but the last poem?? i'd never considered that someone could enjoy being alive when someone they loved has passed. the fact that the speaker allowed people to rejoice at being alive at their death?? i've never seen it before. the only word i can think of to describe it is beautiful.