Steve Schneider

Steven Schneider began his writing career as a pure poet, composing verse. Though he took an advanced degree in poetry, he found that, in writing verse, he was not reaching the wide audience he desired. Seeking ways to support himself, he began writing nonfiction — books, magazine articles, technical pieces, advertising. He not only earned money, he found the fulfillment of reaching a wide audience that he had been seeking. An experienced professional writer, he then became a professor of professional writing at Maharishi International University. He now has a baby son and, though he still composes verse, the moral of the story is that, in changing times, it pays to diversify.

Steve Schneider

We praise the great Sidha Steve Schneider:
As everyone knows, he’s a writer:

A poet whose diction
Finds art in nonfiction —

No one is better or brighter

With its absolute basis in hand
All language is at his command

This combination
Makes a mighty foundation

Even for castles in the sand (1)

MFA — that’s his degree
That’s “Mighty Fine Athlete,” you see (2)

He can turn on a phrase
In a word, he’ll amaze —

In motion he’s pure poetry

Talk about levels of the game — (3)
His are as high as one can aim

He can trope, he can scheme (4)
More than hope, more than dream —

His dreams become riches and fame

His service is consistently deep.
He’s wide awake, never asleep

With Aaron and Beth, (5)
His wife and his breath,

As he glows, so shall he reap.

His PhD’s almost in tow
That’s “Pretty Heavy Dude,” as you know

An artist, it’s true
But a scientist too

He’s more than a writer. . . he’s a pro

Of writing he’s made a profession
His words can refine — they can freshen.

With more than enough
Of all the “Write Stuff”

He’s a master of enlightened expression.

(1) Refers to Steven’s first nonfiction book Castles in the Sand (1982), in which Steven teamed up with sand castle building maestro Jeffrey Shear and a photographer on a book subtitled, “10 Projects That Can Be Built in One to Six Hours.”

(2) Steve loves tennis and plays quite well.

(3) A play on the title of the 1979 book Levels of the Game, by John McPhee, the story of a tennis match between two great tennis players of the era, Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, called “probably the best tennis book ever written.”

(4) Trope and scheme are literary terms. A trope is the use of a word or phrase in an unusual or unexpected way, a scheme the ordering of words in an unusual way, to achieve heightened rhetorical effect.

(5) Beth is Steve’s wife, Aaron his son.