In Self Por­trait of Icarus as a Coun­try on Fire, Jason Schnei­der­man con­fronts the rise of extrem­ism and anti­semitism in the Unit­ed States while grap­pling with the end of his mar­riage and find­ing his feet as a new­ly sin­gle gay man.

Fol­low­ing up on his land­mark col­lec­tion Hold Me Tight, Jason Schnei­der­man extends his per­son­al and his­tor­i­cal explo­rations in Self Por­trait of Icarus as a Coun­try on Fire. Schneiderman’s sig­na­ture sense of humor works as a con­nec­tive tis­sue across the book, even as the jux­ta­po­si­tions become more unlike­ly (Kaf­ka and Hillary Clin­ton?), the his­tor­i­cal scope becomes wider, and the per­son­al rev­e­la­tions cut deep­er than ever before. These poems rep­re­sent Schneiderman’s most direct and explic­it explo­ration of Jew­ish her­itage and his­to­ry, bring­ing to the sur­face a theme that has often been missed in his work. The strength of these poems is in their pow­er to trace the wound as a form of heal­ing, to con­front the ago­niz­ing in order to make way for joy and, yes, love.