Waving Fly Swatters at Angels, Poems by Penelope Scambly Schott

The poems of Penelope Scambly Schott’s Waving Fly Swatters at Angels embrace silliness, sensuality, and sublimity—an entire world in their wry lines.

Sample Poems by Penelope Scambly Schott

“Penelope Scambly Schott’s poems are wondrous, funny, tragic, tender toward dogs, tenderly pitying of men, ensnared by motherhood, and above all (or below all) humane. Let yourself be carried by the wisdom of her childlike beginner’s mind and her sensual woman’s body, through a lifetime of pointed truths in which the ‘stink of despair’ is also a ‘jewel upon/ our open palm.’”—Alicia Ostriker, author The Volcano and After and The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog

“Waving Fly Swatters at Angels invites us to inhabit a white cabbage moth, face down a praying mantis perched on the toilet lid, and stare into the black bead eyes of a stuffed fox. These poems with their fluid narrator and magical creatures have the directness of fairy tales: wolves lick our sore paws, strangers toss glitter, and angels hover over us but never land. In Schott’s world, dogs—except for the fearsome rottweilers on the roof of Macy’s—serve as earth angels that comfort us in our human hungers, lusts, and desire to be loved. I’ve read these poems over and over for their companionship and humor, welcoming their invitation to rediscover the miracle and the absurdity of being flesh.”—Ann Hostetler, author of Safehold and Empty Room with Light

“Reading these poems you’ll believe in anything—Birth, Death, Men, Bodies, Children, and Dogs, especially Dogs. You might worry, given this list, that Waving Flyswatters at Angels (one of the best titles ever) is filled with hokey and sentimental poems. Far from it! ‘We have always survived by laughing,’ writes Schott. These witty and wise poems will make you laugh because they are witty and because they are wise. And when you read them, you will believe in Surviving.”—Athena Kildegaard, author of Ventriloquy and Course

Penelope Scambly Schott has become an enthusiastic and devoted Oregonian. She received four arts grants in New Jersey before moving to Oregon where she joined a hiking group and received an Oregon Book Award for Poetry. She now lives in the small wheat-growing town of Dufur (pop: 635) where for several years she has led an annual poetry workshop. She and her husband host the White Dog Poetry Salon in Portland. Recent books include On Dufur Hill (2020) and Sophia and Mister Walter Whitman (2021), co-written with her equally enthusiastic and devoted dog.

ISBN: 978-1625494139, 110 pages

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Also by Penelope Scambly Schott:

The Pest Maiden: A Story of Lobotomy

A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Troubles the Commonwealth

How I Became an Historian

House of the Cardamom Seed

On Dufur Hill