"This message from the kinetic yet ghostly realm of
Wisconsin that suffuses Abraham Smith's Insomniac Sentinel alive with its rural
glossary, with its hidden waking clandestinely complex within seeming quotidian
display. It scripts a lingual fuse of heresy, that absorbs particulates of
human brewing, and what follows is a slow magnetic glow that suffuses the text
not unlike a susurrant under-ringing. Thus, it emits by complexity by this glow
letting us know that verbal life continues to not only thrive but quietly erupt
and cascade from regions that we seemingly thought to be inert, always
poetically aware of yielding circuitous treasure from what was thought to be a
less than magnetic hamlet." -
Will
Alexander, Pulitzer finalist for
Refractive Africa and author of
The Contortionist Whispers "you know, i am the giver/back of sound." This bardic claim
could only be true of Abraham Smith, who sings open-throatedly the continuous
song of a crane lifting off the junkpile and into history's storm. His song
pushes through and around the language of working, of working bodies, both
human and inhuman, raising it all up, illuminating it, as in a manuscript,
indicating what is precious, as if sound could be the one thing it is not, and
shed light. That's the sad note in this "gravy-to-cradle" threnody, this
"lunged-up thud tender." Reading Abraham Smith makes you ask the big questions,
like, are our wings made of the shreds of where we came from? Does a bird fly
on its wing, or on its song?" –
Joyelle
McSweeney, author of
Toxicon and Arachne "I can hear Abraham Smith's voice intoning in his
breathless and headlong fashion throughout his latest collection of poems. The
verses practically read themselves to me, accompanied by an insistent rhythm a
backbeat for music that these poems conjure up." -
Charlie Parr, Smithsonian Folkways recording
artist and author of
Last of the Better Days Ahead "Abraham Smith is one of my favorite living poets keeping
the art form alive. He is patiently stoking the fires of imagination and his
persistence has kept the cinders of inspiration smoldering. It is a joy to read
his work and thrill to hear him read it in person." -
Margo
Price, Grammy nominee, Farm Aid board member, and author of
Maybe
We'll Make It
