Dream Big, Work Harder
Poetry by Rebecca Schumejda
48 pages. ISBN 0-9769857-6-4
Featuring original cover art by Nathan Graziano
6.5" x 8"; saddle-stitched
; full color cover

First edition - $10

Also available from Alternative Books, Bohemian Book Bin (Kingston, NY), City Lights, The Golden Notebook, Powells.com, and Amazon.com

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Reviews and press:

Rebecca was one of a handful of selected featured readers at the Nineteenth Annual Independent and Small Press Fair in New York City on December 2, 2006. A video of the reading can be seen here.

ForeWord This Week (12/6/2006): "This short book of striking poetry by a Kingston, NY area poet, uses words as they were intended to be used, combined in such a way as to create pictures of life and work and relationship that we can recognizeand yet so original and direct that you will turn the pages eagerly curious about the next."

Blind Man's Rainbow: "The elegance of ["Falling into Hot Tar"] made the entire collection for me. Although I had expected at least some mention of Schumejda's father somewhere in the collection, I was not prepared for such a well-written and beautifully described tribute. ... Schumejda makes the beauty of common situations tangible. Worth the $10 and then some."

Doug Holder: "Many of the poems in this fine collection deal with the poet’s concessions to domesticity—the promise of youth versus the realities of being an adult. In the poem 'The Happy Ever After' Schumejda skillfully defines the dichotomy between the different phases in her life: the endless horizons of youth versus domestic routine.... There are many well-crafted poems about marriage, the poet’s father, and her relentless quest for meaning in the pedestrian."

The Iconoclast: "Poems that are tales of living hard with disappointment and loss, and fueled by an even-toned anger and last drink. Though sought after, the moments of grace are rare. One finds what brief revelation or glimpse of beauty one can in the struggle—then presses on."