Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Recent books include On Dufur Hill (about her wheat-growing town, population 635) and Waving Fly Swatters at Angels (about almost everything else).

Other poems by Penelope Scambly Schott in Verse Daily:
September 24, 2020:   "Dance of the Fire Imps" "One tiny fire imp leapt out..."
July 14, 2020:   "Bless the Old Wheat Farmers" "Bless their bellies and suspenders..."
May 12, 2011:   "His Eye" "Somewhere where terrible things happen..."
February 7, 2010:   "Sacrament of the Moths" "Dust from a moth's wing is lint from a prayer...."
November 17, 2005:   "April, Again" " The most brutal movie I ever saw..."

Books by Penelope Scambly Schott:

Other poems on the web by Penelope Scambly Schott:
Four poems
Three poems
Two poems
"Second Tour"
Two poems
"God Becomes a Hairdresser"
"The Woman who Went Mad from Machine Noise"

Penelope Scambly Schott's Website.

About Waving Fly Swatters at Angels:

"Penelope Scambly Schott's poems are wondrous, funny, tragic, tender toward dogs, tenderly pitying of men, ensnared by motherhood, and above all (or below all) humane. Let yourself be carried by the wisdom of her childlike beginner's mind and her sensual woman's body, through a lifetime of pointed truths in which the 'stink of despair' is also a 'jewel upon/ our open palm.'"
—Alicia Ostriker

"Waving Fly Swatters at Angels invites us to inhabit a white cabbage moth, face down a praying mantis perched on the toilet lid, and stare into the black bead eyes of a stuffed fox. These poems with their fluid narrator and magical creatures have the directness of fairy tales: wolves lick our sore paws, strangers toss glitter, and angels hover over us but never land. In Schott's world, dogs-except for the fearsome rottweilers on the roof of Macy's-serve as earth angels that comfort us in our human hungers, lusts, and desire to be loved. I've read these poems over and over for their companionship and humor, welcoming their invitation to rediscover the miracle and the absurdity of being flesh."
—Ann Hostetler

"Reading these poems you'll believe in anything-Birth, Death, Men, Bodies, Children, and Dogs, especially Dogs. You might worry, given this list, that Waving Flyswatters at Angels (one of the best titles ever) is filled with hokey and sentimental poems. Far from it! 'We have always survived by laughing,' writes Schott. These witty and wise poems will make you laugh because they are witty and because they are wise. And when you read them, you will believe in Surviving."
—Athena Kildegaard