Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, Northern California Book Reviewers"
"The quiet rural boys and men of Smith’s poems want neither colorful escape nor radical transformation, though their hard lives speak to our social system too. . . . They want to make do, get by, as disillusioned adults, and they find it harder than it should be, in part because farm life has always been hard, in part because much of America does not see, or does not want to see, them. . . . Weldon Kees, Donald Justice and, behind them, Robert Frost constitute the tradition in which Smith works, and in his hands it is political."
---Stephanie Burt, New York Times Book Review"Inspired by his childhood on a dairy farm in Illinois, tales of rural life lead the way in this Austin Smith collection focused on family, violence, and memories."
---Matt Sutherland, Foreword Reviews"Austin Smith . . . weav[es] the everyday violence of farm life into poetry that darkens the Robert Frost idyll.
Flyover Country buzzes with the sober vitality of acknowledgement, refusing to recognize 'the cat you love coming back / From the windbreak' without the 'rare songbird / In his mouth.' Smith unveils the brutality of otherwise Instagram-friendly landscapes, instilling a deep sense of stability in the core of his poetry. In their logic, these poems subconsciously circumvent sensationalism — the dead bird in the jaw of the cat prevents us from posting it to Instagram."
---Verity Sturm, Michigan Daily"
Flyover Country by Austin Smith is a marvelous collection that conveys deep insights and exquisite details about life in the Midwest. . . . What links his subjects, as the title suggests, is the fact that seemingly invisible actions taken by Americans have lasting consequences in places we typically choose to view only from a distance."
---Elizabeth Lund, Washington Post"This masterwork is pure body heat about the humane and the inhumane — how we treat each other — in anecdote, narrative, personal, and historical poems. A spectrum of stories is rooted in the Midwest with indelible characters and memorable events. Smith can sound like your next-door neighbor even while lacing cruelty and sweetness neatly together. He’s captured the heart of rural America and navigated its conscience brilliantly."
---Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books
