Description
“Get some snacks, eh Fatty? Lose any fat yet? Doesn’t look like it!”
Rhythm & Mucous is a collection of over three dozen of Mather Schneider’s best poems, exploring working-class life, Mexican culture, and more. In the tradition of Charles Bukowski, John Fante, and other chronicles of American low-life, Schneider offers a bleak, tender, and comedic look at everyday misery and debauchery.
“These are touching pieces, full of pathos, and a great ending for this collection of strong narrative poems that tell stories of life as it is for a poet writing from out his experience, and not from theoretical understanding. A rich experience it is too, including mucus and other unpalatable effluvium, ugliness as well as beauty, laughter as well as tears: a sweet fragrance mixes with the stench here, on these pages, just as in life, in a dry inhospitable landscape like that of Schneider’s poetry, and everywhere else.” — Wayne F. Burke, author of Turmoil and Other Stories
“Schneider does not write about the pretty, the lovely, the sublime. His poetry is blood and guts writing, a type of cross between Hemingway and Bukowski where the experiences of death are everywhere, a potpourri scattered like shotgun blasts across the pages: a corpse behind a McDonald’s dumpster, a murdered uncle, a cop who dies behind the wheel, a dead puppy dog crying out, as well as anger. The anger of desperate people living desperate lives, an underclass that is powerlessness, moving through life like medieval shades while looking for meaning they never find. These poems will grab you by the gut, wrench you around, and never let go.” — Ralph Monday, author of Empty Houses and American Renditions and Bergman’s Island and Other Poems
“In Rhythm & Mucous, Mather Schneider returns with a collection of poems that feel as authentic as a pair of bloodshot eyes staring back at you from the page. His poems move us because they are real. They are lemon trees and tequila shots and the anguish of unexplainable loss. Lots of people want to be Bukowski today. Mather Schneider is just Mather Schneider. I’d rather read a poem written by Mather than 99 percent of what gets called poetry today. That’s the fucking truth.” — Jay Sizemore, author of Love and Thievery
“Out on the dusty fringes where America fades into Mexico, Mather Schneider transforms observations of underclass life—however bitter, ugly or absurd—into beautiful vignettes. Each poem paints a scene. A sick man drinking. A barren woman. Dykes brawling outside a gay club. A beautiful, one-legged woman and her callous husband. A slow and painful farewell. Almost a book of short stories, Schneider’s poems are accessible, funny and empathic. If you would not normally consider picking up a book of poetry, consider this one.” — Nikolai Vladivostok, author of Lord of Hell
Reviews
- George D. Anderson, Bold Monkey Review
- Wayne F. Burke, Terror House Magazine
Rhythm & Mucous is also available in paperback format. To purchase the paperback edition, click here.
COMBO DEAL: Purchase the e-book editions of Rhythm & Mucous and Mather Schneider’s memoir 6 to 6 together and save 10 percent. Use coupon code “SCHNEIDER” at checkout to get the discount.