Poetry. "Before reading the poems in Mike Smith's remarkable new book, the reader must take a good long look at his opening note on method. Smith means and does just what he says in this note. I've seen these acts of Houdini-magic unfolding over the last several years, and I've published a number of them in Notre Dame Review. To watch Mike Smith load himself with chains and then escape with a kind of elegant grace is astonishing. The more ambitious poems in 'Anagrams of America'—the anagram of Pound's first Canto, for example, and the whole of 'Multiverse: A Bestiary'—are expressions of a weird and even troubling genius. I don't know of anything else quite like them anywhere"—John Matthias.

Author City: RALEIGH, NC USA

Mike Smith lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his young daughter and son. A graduate of UNC-Greensboro, Hollins College, and the University of Notre Dame, he has published poetry in magazines such as Free Verse, Hotel Amerika, The Iowa Review, The Notre Dame Review, and Salt. He is the author of How to Make a Mummy (WordTech, 2008), MULTIVERSE (BlazeVOX Books, 2010) and BYRON IN BAGHDAD (BlazeVOX Books, 2012), and the translator of Goethe's FAUST (Shearsman Books, 2012).

Reviews and Other Links
Josh Cook in Bookslut
Stacy Cartledge in Free Verse