Longer than anyone knows, Friday has been Freya’s Day—named for the Nordic goddess known in Mediterranean regions as Venus or Aphrodite. On her day, Freya declares open season for mysterious processes known as love—as Schneider writes in his homage to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (“Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines”). Freya’s day requires music, and throughout these poems, Schneider arranges words into delicate melody.

Praise for Friday's Dance

Schneider’s language crackles with jazzy improvisation, but his wit is in the service of serious themes, nowhere more so than in his tribute to his Vietnam vet brother, “fucked / by history or whatever you want to call / this shit-hole business, that not only happens / it happened to my brother.” So, it’s personal, this brief, intense survey of the state of the world, but also universal. And at the close of the final poem, when he puts his cap back on his pen and “It makes a small click,” that click reverberates long after reading.
     —Larry W. Moore, Publisher, Broadstone Books