In 2002, I met my future publisher at a poetry workshop she led in the Texas Hill Country, just outside of Kerrville. It was a rainy and unusually cool April day that changed the course of my life. A few months later, I signed a contract for publication of my first book. Breath Found Along The Way is a fusion of passions - my poetry and my mask art. Its title comes from a wise man's answer to the question "What is Tai Chi?" His reply: "Tai Chi is the breath I found along the way." I could choose no better title, as I believe my life and the experiences and knowledge gained throughout it, are like finding my breath along The Way. We learn as we go, through laughter and pain, that which is essential to our being.

I encourage all writers to seek a writing group to join. It doesn't matter if you are unpublished or if you are a professional writer - your presence in a writer's group helps support a very special community. This community values clear communication. This community regularly practices the arts of reading and listening.

I joined the Kerrville Writers Association (KWA) when I moved to Kerrville from Houston in 1995. I had been a member of Houston's large Manuscriptor's Guild for several years, and wanted to find another flourishing writers group near my new home as soon as possible. After all, I had "big plans" for myself…I wanted to write full-time and publish a book - and I finally had the time to pursue that goal.

I gratefully discovered the KWA and have been a member ever since. I also serve as the President of this 16 year-old organization that is still growing. We currently have 22 members that represent genres from novels to poetry and from children's books to memoirs...with lots of interesting writing in between. No one claims to be an expert, but we all contribute our thoughts to the critiques. This makes for a strong group which benefits from the collective ideas and experience of its membership.

Many of our members are published, many are not, but they attend meetings as regularly as they are able - whether they have something of their own to be read or not. This supports those who are currently writing, and also can be very inspirational in "jump-starting" the writing projects of others.

We welcome guests at a KWA meeting so that they may determine if membership would be helpful to them. As a guest, they may listen to the readings and critiques of members. Annual dues of $10 are payable to the KWA should a guest decide to join.

Besides the Kerrville Writers Association, I am a member of the following organizations and benefit greatly from their support of my writing through classes and workshops they offer. If you are interested in starting a writers' critique group in your area, feel free to contact me. I would be happy to share my experience with you.
     • Writers League of Texas
     • Gemini Ink
     • International Women's Writing Guild

Please read below for comments about Anne's book and for samples of its poetry. Continue reading for samples from Anne's manuscript in progress for her next book, Warrior Women.

March 15, 2003…Plain View Press is pleased to announce the publication of "Breath Found Along the Way" by Anne Schneider, a poet, face casting mask artist and Tai Chi instructor who lives and works in Central Texas. Schneider's poems, which come from the creative matrix of these disciplines, lead us to the soul of the family and the peace of the soul.

Anita Skeen, Professor of English, Michigan State University; Director of the Summer Creative Arts Festival and October Writing Festival at Ghost Ranch Conference Center says of Schneider's work, "Her poems detail the inner workings of intimate relationships from friendship to family to lovers, past and present. In the poems and masks assembled here she does bear witness, sometimes through humor, sometimes through pain, to the way the ordinary becomes something more when viewed through the convex lens of image and language, when the world of the personal and the natural word collide, when memory becomes another kind of mask."

from Breath Found Along The Way…

EXTRAVAGANCE
A friend calls me extravagant,
maybe I am.
At 48, I refuse anymore
to buy cheap toilet paper.
Discounting differences, we stroll shops,
I fondle baubles and beads
warm with amber like tigers' eyes.
Sun in the palms of my hands,
I step out on the sidewalk to bask.
Aren't they great? I prompt.
Lovely, she whispers.

We stop to stroke fabrics,
racks of them hanging-out
for attention, like children,
some subtle, some shouting,
all anxious to be noticed.
My friend's hand lingers
on a shimmer of swirls,
turquoise and purple,
an elegant bruise in need of caress.

A man once gave me a shawl
my friend lifts the hanger,
fingertips tracing promises
across a peacock's tail.
Like this? I prod,
hoping she won't drift away.
A long time ago
she releases the cloth
sifting like sand through her fingers
one summer in Morocco.

My friend rehangs the dress,
       arranges its proper lines.
I'd love to see it, I press,
knowing she's already gone.
I don't still have it, Silly,
retreat complete behind crooked smile
what would I do with it now?

FOUND AT THE ALTAR
Red-tailed hawks parasail my sky
messengers from a world beyond
but within my reach.
From my porch I watch sun
rise on veined roadmaps illuminated
in the ears of jackrabbits.

Hills swell within my rocky womb,
cactus fruit defying
the lack of rain, the refuge
offered in this place
called mine.

I stack stones along my road,
gifts to the grandmothers
walking here before me
straight and balanced,
saluting the sun.

NOTHING LIKE
I learned to cut vegetables carelessly,
nothing like the ones from my mother's kitchen
carefully measured
in even lengths
all the same thickness.

I protested at first, "They won't cook evenly."
"And so?" he'd say, and chop away.
"But some will be done
and some will be raw."
"And that's a problem?"
I thought so.

I learned it's so easy
to hack with abandon,
passion-speak Rilke to Rumi
Aristotle to Plato,
glasses of wine
flanking the cutting boards,
Bose blaring Three Tenors,
Vivaldi, Sor.

Nothing like my mother's kitchen.

BIRDSONG
Joseph Byrd was discovered in his workshop,
body slumped slightly,
head neatly resting
between the awls and knives
arranged according to size.
In his open hand,
a piece of maplewood,
the promises of butterscotch slivers
collecting like curled down
around his feet.

Joseph Byrd would have chosen the wood carefully,
analyzing curves and planes
the grain would accept
to create the creature anew,
sure in the wisdom
of his knife's flight
to find it there, hiding,
in its own nest.

Joseph Byrd carved away excess,
sanding wings so thin
the light behind them
passed like breath
between the feathers.
Polishing the amber breast
he brought fire to the wood's heart,
then quietly set it free.

from Anne's manuscript for Warrior Women…


THE TANGO
That's what changed her,
though I couldn't have known
when we met for dinner -
the first time in two years.

Oh, the red bolero jacket
and matching red heels
with ankle straps
were clues,

those, and the fifty pounds
she wasn't wearing, the short hair cut
in gray-bashing brunette -
they all spelled out something new

that spring evening at the café.
But those things were just icing
on the cake - accessories of change,
not the instigators.

No, it had to be the tango -
and not the ballroom variety.
Hell no, it was the street tango
straight from Argentina

where men stood in lines
in the late eighteen hundreds,
portenos who had just entered Buenos Aires,
waiting their turn at the bordelos

on the fringes of society,
improvising prospective encounters
of passion and lust
tinged with frustration and unrequited love,

love of a land they had left
and women they would never know,
tantalizing each other, hip to hip,
one leading the other in ochos -

tiny figure-eights back-stepped
with swiveling hips and up on toes,
always executed up on the toes,
accentuating the calves,

elongating the legs -
and all these words tumble
from the lips of a friend
I no longer know,

about a world I cannot grasp,
a world she sought
and danced her way into,
fully aware of the transformation

from the woman who remained
at his bedside long enough
to watch him die, long enough
to bring a final blessing

to the years they shared.
It's the ultimate conversation
between a man and a woman
she whispers across our table,

And you never anticipate the lead
she adds, straightening her jean jewelry.
And I don't know if she's talking about the final
two years with her husband,
or if it's just the tango.

THE TANGO appeared in the 2007 Austin International Poetry Festival anthology di*verse*city



SKIN DANCING
Indigo lines
engrave dark stains on fair skin,
bleed buckets once reserved for tears.

       She wears baggy pants, long sleeves, a hat,
       hopes would-be employers will not notice
       it is too hot for cover ups.

Indigo lines
keep hair shaved close,
boast the Chinese character for chaos.

       Creation rises from scars carved
       on the tablet of her body,
       she begs lovers read each line aloud.

Indigo lines
mark maps of roads taken,
promises broken, sites salvaged.

       Her mother struggles to recognize
       daughter in a new skin, skin she earned,
              skin she learned to dance in.

SKIN DANCING appeared in the 2006 AIPF anthology di*verse*city

WARRIOR WOMAN
Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.
-Anais Nin

Below sandstone rooms in canyon walls,
my chest and throat ache with a cry
that cannot escape, swell from within
like a welt on unbroken skin.

I decipher stories told in stone,
talking stream guides me through cool shade
to the cave I've seen only from a distance,
looming now above my head, already in my heart

against the valley's wall I find a ladder
lashed together, tendons of rope wound
round and round each rail and rung like wounds.
I do not look before I take each step

I summon the Fates from a cloudless sky,
I am welcomed by the cave's open-wide embrace,
explore its cove, perch on a small stone perfect
for minding the drama of sun on hawk's wing

or the green blur of conifers
evergreen always, knowing no seasons
I spy an opening that sings my approach,
kiva where I find one more ladder,

this one leads me down, down
into darkness and cool air caresses.
I sink into a squat, close my eyes,
listen to whispers in this place

I name home.

WARRIOR WOMAN inspired Anne's manuscript for her second book, to be titled Warrior Women