Simply put, Dennis Schmitz is among the most original, honest poets writing today. He manages to write about the joy and heartache of everyday life (including working-class Chicago and his life in Sacremento) in a way that belongs to no other poet. Once you read the poems in this volume, you will be compelled to search out the collections they were extracted from, out-of-print or not. I cannot praise these poems enough - if you have not read Dennis Schmitz, move him to the top of your must-read list - now.

It's difficult for me to appreciate the American canon of approximately the last thirty years; most of it appears as though overly spoiled, unlived children have partaken. I have, however, and most luckily so, come across a brilliant American volume drawn by a gentleman I'd not heard of before-Dennis Schmitz, a German American somewhere past middle age. The volume in question is Singing-an American friend here in London had it among his collection. I must say I've never read poems quite like them, and of course I read much, indeed, even many of the American poetry darlings.

Interesting, indeed, is Mr. Schmitz's uncanny weave through the high and low points of life, his odd line breaks which cut firmly downward and hard over the way life does. I've now read String and the man's selected poems as well, and I can hardly imagine any other American poet of his generation with a more interesting take on the craft. So often Mr. Schmitz partakes in the microcosms: "a mauve around the apple/with one crescent bite/creating the notion of fault". Each poem, however, gathers itself, most humbly, into an appropriate allegory.

Since I don't have ample space to write what I want, suffice to say that Mr. Schmitz is one of the most original poets, most powerful poets, and one of the most unspoiled poets I know of among the hundreds of American poets I've read in the last fifty years or more. Dare I say that I find him rather more interesting than our own Mr. Larkin or Mr. Hughes, both of whom I dearly love. I do believe that, far into the future, readers of poetry will find Mr. Schmitz one of the most interesting of his generation. I'm rather certain as well, and so my American friend has suggested, that there are many who know of Schmitz's excellence but, of course, would rather not discuss the matter.

Dennis Schmitz is a poet who deeply deserves to be more well-known. Averse to the kind of self-publicizing that seems to be second nature to many top poets, he lets his work speak for itself. "The Truth Squad," his seventh book, encapsulates many of the qualities that make Schmitz's poetry so utterly distinctive and so fascinating. These poems are marked by a subtle lyricism, an off-handed weirdness, and metaphysical depth. Schmitz, like Billy Collins, possesses a deft magican's touch, an uncanny ability to conjure up strange scenarios from the most mundane circumstances. But while Collins' poetry suffers from occasional slackness and sloppiness, Schmitz's never does. Much of the pleasure of reading "The Truth Squad" comes from discovering the precise and exquisite craftsmanship of poems that at first glance might have seemed inchoate. The experience is something akin to listening to Theolonius Monk.

Schmitz's poems, because they are so freshly imagined and so carefully crafted, are not ones that can be quickly digested over the breakfast table. They require and reward rumination.
I find myself returning again and again to "Dances," "Paradise," "Iowa Gothic," and "The Text" and other poems in "The Truth Squad." And after each encounter I come away with a new discovery that makes me shake my head in wonder.

Dennis Schmitz is a true original, the "real thing." Nobody writes like he does. He doesn't write like anyone else. The poems in The Truth Squad are fused and layered and deeply, surprisingly imagined. Schmitz gets more energies into the short line than any poet I know, and is a master of cunning, charged line breaks. He also weaves in a marvelous, bold quirkiness, ala Edson or Simic--counterpoint to the moral (and mortal) seriousness of his work. Equally intuitive and intelligent, these poems make a unique, delicious and somehow inevitable music.

Reading a Schmitz poem is like looking into one of Joseph Cornell's boxes and "getting it," yet also sensing one may not be apprehending all that is contained. So the looking-into never tires the reader. The poems invite rereading--for the pleasure of their high craft, and the depth and resonance of meaning. I have all of Schmitz' work, and even after 25 years find each rereading an electrifying pleasure and new experience.

When all the hoo-ha by and about most of our currently Famous Poets blows away in the eternal wind, these poems will still hold their mineral shapes, and last.

In the poem "Paradise," Schmitz says the poet's work is "to make night from one/owl & with his own night sweat to wash/enough talk to wake each of us//the other side of sleep."

Dennis Schmitz does the poet's work, in this wide-awake, awakening, brilliant collection.