Long Poetry Bio

Born under a full moon on the fall equinox in the year of the snake, which was also the year Mad Libs was born, Steven Schmidt practiced pure pretension until humbled by the Muse.

Steven Schmidt is a software developer who has worked on accounting, engineering, clinical lab, and genomic applications. He has a B Math from Univ of Waterloo (Ontario) and an interest in modal & relevance logic and self-referential paradoxes.

He started writing poetry in 1977. He has had poems published in Soundings, Zephyr, Hookah, Xanadu, Long Island Sounds, Freshet, Maintenant, Perspectives II, Writing Outside the Lines, and Bards Annual, sometimes under the name Steven Zetschka.
He has made tunes for poems by Johnny Arp, William Blake, Emily Rogers, Mitzi Grossman, Raymond Patterson, Jack Kerouac, Kathaleen Donnelly, and Adam Fisher.

He was active in the Great South Bay Poetry Cooperative. He has participated in the Long Island Poetry Collective peer workshop for 16 years, the Lake Grove Poets peer workshop, and the Farmingdale Creative Writing and poetry workshops.

He claims the following have influenced his poetry:

• Sumerian poetry
• The Elder Edda
• Ikkyu Sojun
• Troubadors Arnaut Daniel and Guirat de Bornelh (He claims to have been, in a previous life, a peasant killed by Bertran de Born.)
• Minnesingers Walter von der Vogelweide and Neidhart von Reuenthal
• "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"
• Thomas Campion
• Ramprasad Sen
• Emily Dickinson
• Robert Graves
• Kurt Schwitters
• Tristan Tzara
• Hugo Ball
• Jean Arp
• Federico Garcia Lorca
• Shinkichi Takahashi
• Laura Riding
• Vernon Watkins
• Mary Barnard
• Leonard Cohen
• Peter Sinfield
• Devo
• Lydia Lunch
• Babes in Toyland (esp. _Spanking_Machine_)
• George Wallace
• Rae Armantrout

His ability to be influenced has been aided by an integrity deficit. Guilty of indulging in extreme metalepsis: take the transitive closure of (Metonymy union Metaphor) and then a topological closure of that.

He hosts the Northport Arts Coalition's monthly Poets in Port readings and organized the Nest of Flames instant book party in April 2008 and the Dickinson in December poetry & music event in December 2008 at the Northport Library.

Two arrests, no convictions.

To write some poems one must
walk right to the cliff edge
and to revise them,
look down.

Endorsement by Barbara Reiher-Meyers:

There once was a poet named Schmidt
who wrote of some fantastic ... stuff.
I could listen for days,
not know what he says,
but be glad just to be part of it.

Performance:

http://www.poetryvlog.com/sschmidt.html

Blog:

http://persistentfool.blogspot.com/

Myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/zetschka

Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/Zetschka