Noelle Schmidt plows through the distorted shrapnel of trauma dormant and still tingling.

Claimings and Other Wild Things is a brave debut poetry collection which delves into a catalog of personal struggle and identity, all the while inviting readers to imagine the "prophet in the dirty motel" or "the illusion of soft flesh giving way" or the pent up rage of a "boxed-up grenade sent round trip".

This is poetry of exactitude -- honest, at times tender, a collection which reminds us how life's obstacles inform the accruing intensity of being human in the twenty-first century.