GIVEN DAYS is an insightful collection of seasonally-based poems by Amy Woschek Schmidt. With a voice intimately attuned to the rhythms of rural life, Schmidt finds transcendence in the details of everyday experience. Whether celebrating the first blooms of spring, the fertility of summer, the turning of autumn, or the stillness of winter, Schmidt reminds us to be patient and to pay attention to the small miracles unfolding all around us. In her luminous collection, Given Days, Amy Woschek Schmidt gives us poems that often seem like prayers, drawing our attention to the natural world and all it offers. It is fitting that Schmidt divides her book into sections corresponding to the seasons since these are poems rooted in a landscape and its lessons. In a poem about her garden, she sees “a periscope of hope/rising up over the trench,” finding spiritual significance within ordinary time. Visiting with a niece leads her to ask, “What small ocean/would I hear if I lifted her/to my ear?” Even the smallest moment offers the possibility of revelation. Schmidt’s poems do more than praise. She also acknowledges loss and change. In a poem that feels reminiscent of Emily Dickinson, Schmidt describes autumn as “a sharp axe whittling away the days.” Perhaps what most characterizes these poems is a deep sense of confidence in life’s goodness and meaning. Daily life matters, and within these familiar scenes, Schmidt assures us that “What’s buried/will rise.” As she calls us to recognize, this is, after all, “sacred soil, deep and rich.” Her readers can only feel gratitude for how she has joined the earthly and the transcendent in her moving, musical work. — Margaret Mackinnon, author of Afternoon in Cartago Autumn, arriving like a slow burning / sip of whiskey. A bird’s wing, a shade so pure it could only have come / from that one bright dimension / we were made for. And time itself, a sharp edge whittling away the days / carving creation down to its quick. The poems in Amy Woschek Schmidt's Given Days trace the arc of a year, inviting us to experience the world through a consciousness grounded deeply in the moment. Witness, for Schmidt, is a form of worship; she is at heart a devotional poet, in the tradition of Mary Oliver and Annie Dillard. Forgive me, she writes, asking for a miracle / when this very morning I held / a ripe tomato in my hand, still warm, / as if the sun had followed me in /from the garden. Even clothespins contain a spark of the sacred: Their duty delights them. Almost, / they gleam like gold. How much beauty there is in the world, these poems remind us. How much heaven here on earth, seen and unseen. How beautiful the fox will be / with only stars to see her. —Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet, author of The Greenhouse and Tulips, Water, Ash Amy Woschek Schmidt, in Given Days, sees the world as a wondrous gift from God (not just in the book but in her everyday life) and these poems portray that wonder, that gift, simply and exquisitely. She very subtly, but memorably, paints with the sounds of words: "fertile skies / vast as a farmer's field. . . . season of sun, hot and high, . . . jars of jewels on the shelf of my mind." Like me, you'll find yourself saying to friends, as I did again and again with my partner, "Listen to this one, so beautiful." Her poems are all delightful gifts. Lovely, lovely. —Vince Gotera, Poet Laureate of Iowa and author of Dragons & Rayguns Amy Woschek Schmidt is a poet and essayist. Her work has been published in numerous journals including Radar Poetry, Rattle, Taproot, Smartish Pace, Magpie and Harpur Palate. She was born and raised in Iowa, homesteaded for 20 years in rural Minnesota. and now lives with her family on an island off the Caribbean coast of rural Panamá. You can find her online at www. amywoschekschmidt.com.