The poems of Lena Moses-Schmitt’s new collection, True Mistakes (96 pages; University of Arkansas Press), feature those gaps of perception in which what is obvious or straightforward becomes supplanted by the relentless onslaught of experience. A finalist for the 2025 Miller Williams Poetry Prize, the collection traces that which we so often miss or move past in a hurry, and grounds us in a new mode of witness—where, “Like the sun, I can only look at you/when I don’t look.” Moses-Schmitt’s dazzling poems center the importance of carefully wrought introspection in negotiating the distance between writing and living. In its […]
That I Should Stop Searching for Whoever I Was Before: ‘True Mistakes’ by Lena Moses-Schmitt
by Danielle Shi
