Description
Book Synopsis"Smote is a book of the dark reality of our daily existence; it is a book of abiding grace."—Robert Olen Butler
I release you like the crank-addled truck driver
releases his cargo at the midnight dock
until the warehouse is one in a trail
of crumbs, little light left on behind him.
James Kimbrell is the author of The Gatehouse Heaven and My Psychic, and the co-translator of Three Poets of Modern Korea. He been the recipient of the Discovery/The Nation Award, a Whiting Award, a fellowship from the NEA, and a Morton Prize.
Trade Review"Kimbrell (My Psychic) pushes his readers to the limit in his frenetic and unceasingly visceral third collection....Kimbrell's poems will doubtless come crashing back as unexpected, haunting nodes of language." Publishers Weekly "The poems in Smote speak of loss and the wanting of more life.... [Kimbrell] lets us feel what cannot be expressed, by any words." NewPages
"Kimbrell (My Psychic) pushes his readers to the limit in his frenetic and unceasingly visceral third collection....Kimbrell's poems will doubtless come crashing back as unexpected, haunting nodes of language." —Publishers Weekly "The poems in Smote speak of loss and the wanting of more life.... [Kimbrell] lets us feel what cannot be expressed, by any words." —NewPages
Table of ContentsI. Free Checking! So Many Stories How to Tie a Knot Pluto’s Gate: Mississippi Take Me As I Am Ode: Feeling Up My Friend’s Sister at the Moment Their Drunken Father Begins the Dog Slaughter The Starting Point II. Apology after Returning to Hooker Street Thirty Years after We Moved It Was Like a Movie Smote Apocalyptic Lullaby The Full Ratio Roots My Father’s Friends Travel from the Afterlife to Attend His Memorial Elegy for My Mother’s Ex Boyfriend Kingfish III. Love Letter to You, Dear Reader Elegy for the Epic O Anna Lynn, You Must Have Known No Death in the Land of the Dead Chicken Brick’n There’s Nothing Wrong with You The Guitar Boat Not Soul Heuristic for the Nearsighted
