Cadillac Men

by Rebecca Schumejda

Rebecca Schumejda's second full-length collection, Cadillac Men, explores the pool hall subculture before the economic downturn in 2008, when the narrator and her husband took a calculated risk and purchased a pool hall in downtown Kingston, New York. During their arduous planning, they did not consider that their business and livelihood would depend on men who threw pebbles in church collection plates, shot up in the bathroom, and had nicknames like Bobby-Balls-in-Hand, The Butcher, and Mikey Meatballs. Cadillac Men is a fractured poetic memoir about the year the narrator's husband chased his lifelong dream by starting Crazy Eights, and the recessions that occurred as her family, the economy, her health and The Cadillac Men all took downward spirals.

156 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

Rebecca Schumejda lives, teaches, and writes in New York's Hudson Valley. She is the author of "Falling Forward" (sunnyoutside press, 2009) and several chapbooks. Her new book "Cadillac Men" was just release from New York Quarterly Books in November and is a poetic memoir about a pool hall she co-owned. For more information: www.rebeccaschumejda.com

Reviews

[Dave Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our dryer died a couple months ago so it was back to Laundromats for a while, and I was pulling books of poetry to read and re-read while my clothes tumbled. This is a great book to read in a Laundromat, which is to say it's a great-great book, one that feels as real and necessary as drying your clothes with people counting quarters. Cadillac Men is a book about folks playing pool because their lives are crumbling. It's also about the owners of the pool hall and how they don't want lives to crumble, least of all their own. Every poem in here has a little sadness but the lines and the way Schumejda writes bring hope and happiness. She is the rare American poet these days: a writer who creates a world that we recognize but has never been illuminated before. I've read all her books. I'll read them all again.

[Hosho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yay for poetry, and yay for Rebecca Schumejda. I've known and loved her work for years now, and I consider her a friend -- none of which changes the fact that this is the best stuff she's ever written...a book she was born to write. As it develops, it is less poetry, and more cinema -- and the dispirate intersections of gamblers, hustlers, loners, and losers play out as beautifully as anything Bukowski ever laid down. Only Rebecca searches desperately for meaning and reasons in these Cadillac Men, and, of course, in the Cadillac Women too. A beautiful, and amazingly human book.

[THE TORONTO QUARTERLY · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hey, Everyone! Please check out my latest interview with Rebecca Schumejda as we discuss her second collection of poetry Cadillac Men (NYQ Books, 2012). Read the interview now on my TTQ Blog. http://thetorontoquarterly.blogspot.c...

[James Benger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schumejda does it again, this time bringing the reader into the world of a flailing pool hall. A poignant and impactful book.