Slow Learner
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Slow Learner, essays by Jan Shoemaker.
Published by Wandering Aengus Press. "If I can’t have Jan Shoemaker living next door, and I have accepted that cruel fact, at least I can read every word of Slow Learner from cover to cover and then read it again. The only other insurmountable problem is that I wish I had written it." --Abigail Thomas, author of What Comes Next and How to Like It "Slow Learner is like a walk through the woods with your smartest, funniest, most observant friend—in the excellent company of at least two dogs. Afterward? Wine by the fire. And all the cheese." --Jill Christman, author of If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays "What I admire about Slow Learner by Jan Shoemaker is the entire package: her range, her seemingly effortless eye for literary effects, and her complete control of tone. By range I mean she can go from meringue to mystery in a phrase and by literary effects I mean she successfully pulls off more surprises in a paragraph than most writers do in an entire essay. As for tone, she moves assuredly from ridicule to reverence and back, hitting all the emotions in between in every single essay. I laughed all the way through this heartbreaking book. In her view we live in a miracle and are committing a tragedy. No one has said that with more grace, honesty, and generosity of spirit than Jan Shoemaker." --Steven Harvey, author of The Beloved Republic “'Where, if anywhere, does nature leave off and the human mind begin?' Jan Shoemaker asks in these provocative, delightful, and eloquent essays. Again and again, Shoemaker braids whimsy and solemnity, inviting readers to eavesdrop not only on her thinking but on the rich and ordinary days that form a life. Here are essays on teaching, traveling, democracy, illness, and grace; and here are essays on pastries, microscopes, seed pods, ferns, skunk cabbage, the Periodic Table, Roman baths, and what is visible and what is not. Slow Learner is a wise and beautifully written reminder of how we find our way in the dark and what it means to live as a learner. I am reawakened to the powerful ways observation and curiosity can serve us. Read this all at once or savor it all year. Pleasure awaits." --Cindy Hunter Morgan, author of Harborless and Far Company |
The Reliquary Earth
Cover Art by Rhonda Sherwin
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Jan Shoemaker's collection of poems, "The Reliquary Earth," is available directly through the publisher, MainStreet Rag, or pick up a copy at Schuler Books.
The “spirit that slips inside” these gorgeous, intelligent poems, spills out as marvel of the world which at times seems to cry like the crow, yet perseveres like ferns spiraling up through snow. The entire universe, this poet tells us, experiences memory, all of it interconnected. These are lyrical elegies. They are odes. This collection is a synthesis of faith, nature, and ourselves, all in need of one another, all deserving of protection, political and otherwise. -- Joy Gaines-Friedler, author of Capture Theory and Dutiful Heart In The Reliquary Earth, Jan Shoemaker interrogates the world—both natural and man made—in an attempt to understand what it means to be both human and humane amidst the chaos of the twenty-first century. These are wonderful poems, full of that all-too-rare combination of heart and wisdom, truly a manifesto for difficult times. -- Sarah Freligh, author of Sad Math The Reliquary Earth is a collection of treasures, allowing us to walk with Jan Shoemaker and see what she sees. Each poem calls our attention to something we might have overlooked otherwise, and the short lines and careful diction invite us to stop and marvel or weep alongside the speaker. These poems have both a sureness of vision and an aching need to understand: how can we live in the world as we find it? – Susannah Sheffer, author of This Kind of Knowing and Fighting for Their Lives |
Flesh and Stones: Field Notes From A Finite World
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"Travelogue and family album, tour of heart and tour de force--with Flesh and Stones, we are alerted to an astonishing work in words. Jan Shoemaker crafts essays that tell the rare and contrarian facts of life with apparent ease, uncanny authenticity."
--Thomas Lynch, author of The Undertaking "Jan Shoemaker may be the finest crafter of sentences working in the essay today. Her prose displays remarkable humor and wit, an intelligence that never grows brittle because it is based on a lively reading and teaching life and placed in the service of life’s imponderable questions. Her probing of our common mysteries and her affection for others opens great depths of feeling as well. In Flesh and Stones heart and mind and words meet." --Steven Harvey, author of a memoir, The Book of Knowledge and Wonder "Jan Shoemaker leads you into the darkness (a mother dying of Alzheimer's, another faithful dog gone, the stark recognition that we get to keep nothing we love in this world), and then lets in the light, shows you the dance of the sun on the water, and says something so funny, so perfect, you'll just have to laugh. Together, you will move into the questions that matter: When you can't be the person you want to be, what then? Together, you will remember that our largest lives are lived in the tinniest moments" --Jill Christman, author of Darkroom, A Family Exposure |