The Orange Spotlight

Rebecca Schumejda Falling Forward (Sunnyoutside, Feb. 2009)

"It's not easy but necessary to accept the day for what it brings"

At it's best sometimes life can still come across as a drunken stumble down a dimly lit street. I mean you try to walk straight, you focus on the destination, but still you wander and stumble, and occasionally fall. In her debut collection, Falling Forward, Rebecca Schumejda understands this principle, and several other complexities of life. What she is able to do with ease (or what appears to be ease) is take the mundane situations, or simplicity of life, and discover more substantial applications. She is able to recognize that we are all falling in our own ways, but the trick is to fall forward.

Well, not just fall forward, but to find support, to balance on your knees long enough to get back up. Through beers, scrambled eggs, family vacations, threats of divorce, and so on, Schumejda demonstrates that brutal honesty and sharp observations that turns words into poetry. Even though she delivers the heavy truth at every turn, with every empty beer can and dirty diaper, there is still a sense grace and caring in her words. It is as if these poems are warning to those about to fall in love or give birth or graduate college, a warning that life is never what you think. A warning that "There's no way to avoid failure,just lean forward let your knees cushion your fall."