Ellen Hirning Schmidt: Oh, say did you know This Much I Know

Oh, say did you know This Much I Know by Ellen Hirning Schmidt

Cover by Ellen Hirning Schmidt

An update of Oh, say did you know with additional poems for these times.

Available as a paperback online $18 + $4 shipping: Oh, say did you know This Much I Know

In This Much I Know Ellen Hirning Schmidt brings together the personal and the universal in ways that make us think and sometimes laugh, and feel every emotion, from tenderness in the opening poem “Equinox” and other portraits of family and friends, to anger aroused in the skillful suggestiveness of  “Hunting Season,” to hopefulness in “Counting On” with its closing message from John Lewis of “good trouble” fame.

A bracing read, Schmidt’s powerful poems are good company as we navigate these turbulent times.

I really love this book and could say much more about her skill as a poet.

~Mary Azrael, Poet and Editor of Passager Books

In these deeply troubled and troubling times, we need the fierce and inspiring vision of Ellen Hirning Schmidt’s words in This Much I Know. What a gift to be able to turn from the darkness and despair of the daily news to the resolve and hope of her poetry. What an amazing artist she is: how she managed to keep it hidden or private till she turned 70 is another of life’s mysteries! No blurb can pretend to do justice to this collection…Thanks to Schmidt’s clear and powerful voice, these poems summon us to think, to feel and to act: about the children and the earth in our care, and about what is between, underneath and inside each of us as human beings challenged by the search for hope.

~Joel Savishinsky,
author of Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts: Poems on Aging, Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus in the Social Sciences, Ithaca College.

Ellen Schmidt’s poetry weaves tiny moments through with both unique experience, and poignant universality. She can imbue an evening walk with intimations of upheaval. Bringing a sense of personal and world history to her work, Ellen uses words, sounds, form, and format to bring her readers into a vast geography of thought and emotion. From the American Revolution to the crumbled ruins of Gaza, she illuminates the human condition vividly.

~D Ferrara,
Editor, American Writers Review, Editor, Art in the Time of Covid-19, San
Fedele Press

It is hard to summarize This Much I Know in a few words and really do it justice.

The poems do not preach but persuade through Ellen Schmidt’s mastery of language and her ability to use metaphor. “Home” raises our consciousness about the genocide in Gaza. “Hymn Medley” and “The Declaration of Independence” explore the current troubled state of our democracy. As a solution, “Power” shows the impact of small acts of kindness.

Capturing crystalline events from her own life and the natural world, she links them as if tying clover together to form a chain to guide us through the deep fissures that daily open all around us.

Ultimately, This Much I Know arrives at a universal truth that what can persevere through even the most brutal regimes is the force that cannot be silenced—the human heart.

~Vivian Shipley, Connecticut State University
Distinguished Professor and author of Slow Dancing with the Dark (Louisiana Literature Press, Southeastern Louisiana University, 2024).

Winner of the 2019 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize

Oh, say did you know by Ellen Hirning Schmidt

Cover by Ellen Hirning Schmidt

Read Oh, say did you know on Google Books    Oh, say did you know  available on Kindle    Read Oh say did you know on Scribd    or read below Also available as a paperback online Oh, say did you know 

The poems in Oh say did you know reflect on the exterior world, the political and civil landscapes surrounding us all, as well as on the navigation of the interior. My poems traverse where the two meet. Keen observations from the natural world provide metaphors for these parallel terrains.
My poems juxtapose the impact of loss with gratitude for what we keep. The cycles of nature offer sturdy and stirring metaphors. Observations of daily life as well as imaginings are gleaned from growing wisdom that comes with age combined with a fresh outlook.

​Ellen Schmidt has that rare ability to make her personal voice express the universal experiences in all of our lives. She takes the seemingly mundane world of our relationships with family, friends and nature and finds, in them, the insights that allow the reader to question and appreciate what had once been taken for granted.
–Joel Savishinsky, Author of Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America, winner of the Gerontological Society of America’s book of the year prize.

These poems peek at doom and dance with delight, always shining with Ellen’s hope, gratefulness and big heart. She infuses some humor, helping to make this a warming brew. What we drink from her poems is enriching and enjoyable.
​–Barbara Lydecker Crane, author of Zero Gravitas, Alphabetricks, and BackWords Logic

With great wisdom and humanity, Ellen Schmidt gives us poems that teach and celebrate and mourn and encourage. Unafraid of the dark in these fearful times, she is “armed to the teeth with Hope.” I feel lucky to be among her readers, taken care of within her poems – “oases of kindness [where] reason’s tender shoots can burst forth.”–Mary Azrael poet and editor of Passager Books.