Rupert Schmitt

The Interview: Selected Poetry of Rupert Schmitt

Rupert Schmitt has been a teacher and an underground laborer. A full time writer and performance poet he loves water and lives in the Sonoran desert. As a youth while walking a breakwater with Black Mountain poet Charles Olson, ignoring the imposing BMC icon, Rupert scratched the back of a huge angler fish. He climbed Douglas-firs and big leaf maples with ropes and a chain saw and became an expert in wetlands, Millipedes and toxics. After a brief workshop with Charles Stafford, Stafford said Good Luck. Rupert moved away looking at him. Stafford kept looking at Rupert like a friend at the station to a friend on a departing train. Rupert Schmitt's poetry interviews cats. Neighs with horses. Is afraid to confront mountains. Confronts God. Tackles Buddhism. Has a grandmother who smells. Is reverent to nature. Irreverent to leaders. Is passionate, eccentric and compassionate. He respects his teachers who have included a master wood carver, a master oil painter, and master poets. His poetry, easy to read and understand, is what it is. He has had retreats with Malodoma Somé, an African Shaman, Michael Meade a master story teller-drummer, Luis Rodriguez a former East Los Angeles Gang member and Geshe Ngawang Gedung his Tibetan Buddhist teacher who gave him the name of Yeshe. Without his teachers he would be nothing yet he cannot pin down what he learned.