Guest Review - Transitions

Today, I am very pleased to share Dr. Sheri Lindner's review of my most recent short collection of poetry. I have been privileged to make Dr. Lindner's acquaintance at poetry readings on Long Island.

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Schroeder’s book of poems, Transitions, catalogues many types of transitions—those that occur in nature, in the growing up of a child, in the parent-child relationship, and in the shifting perspective of the author.  In each of these types of transitions, Schroeder reflects facets that sometimes stand in opposition to one another.  A poem describing the destructiveness of Storm Sandy is juxtaposed with one detailing the almost unnoticed shift of summer into fall.  Wistfulness of one season’s ending is off-set by eager anticipation of the next season’s appearance.  The  parental desire to protect is counterbalanced by the parental desire for one’s child to be able to bear the knocks that might come his way.  Schroeder’s impulse is always to pull us beyond the focused worries that consume us and out into the world where beauty and significance exist.  He never belittles one over the other, but holds both in tension, understanding that that is the real reflection of our lives.  This is captured most exquisitely in the lines from his poem “Winter Dusk”:  “Grim gray clouds streak by in tatters/a few brown birds snag what matters.”

                                                                         -Sheri Lindner, Ph.D.

                                                                Author of Opening Eden’s Gate

Transitions is available at Smashwords.com for $0.99 for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and many other formats.

Dr. Sheri Lindner, a former teacher of English, is currently a clinical psychologist, and is also a poet and essayist interested in the processes of development and maturation as they are reflected in Biblical stories and children’s literature.  Her writings have appeared in Jewish Currents, The Reconstructionist, Reconstructionism Today, Kerem, Jewish Women's Literary Annual, Poetica, Performance Poets Association Literary Review, Matzoh Ball Soup, Soul-Lit, The Ritual Well, and The New York Times. Dr. Lindner was awarded First Place in the 2013 Nassau County Poet Laureate Society poetry contest for her poem "Return." Opening Eden's Gate is available on Amazon.