He has a sort of naturally pained and cocked regard, as if he is trying to study the roof of your mouth while you speak. He escorts a visitor into the kitchen, where he is watching professional wrestling on a small television. I remember when George 'The Animal' Steele used to tear open the turnbuckles with his teeth. Sha Na Na or a Midwestern summer-stock hotshot going for the Tony in Grease . Long, rolling dipthongs.
Poetry flows like uh haht monituh.
Schneider snaps off the television and leads the way down the dark hallway to his study, where thousands of volumes of poetry line the walls. Poets as diverse as Marina Tsvetaeva and Eugenio Montale occupy shelf space with Henry Rollins, Leonard Nimoy, and even Phil Rizzuto. Name a poet, however obscure, and it is likely he is represented in Schneider's library, the pages of the books stuffed with notes and crabbed annotations. Every volume has been given a grade. His own manuscripts, collections of the literally thousands of poems he has written over the years, are displayed on several rows of clipboards nailed to the wall above his desk.