Description
Poetry. "Disasters uproot us, carry us along / with their flow, lock us into each other," writes Thomas R. Smith in the title poem of this abundant collection. Time and change are persistent themes throughout, whether of youthful desire or "the bright salt of time" that stings, yet quickens us as we age. A central sequence, "Impressionist Calendar," revives the calendrical poem loved by the English Romantics, and topical poems note events as recent as the murder of George Floyd and the COVID-l9 pandemic. Over the arc of this book, Smith recognizes us all as truly 'storm-borne" together on the "island" shaped by the disasters and opportunities of our time.
Author Bio
Thomas R. Smith is author of nine books of poems, Keeping the Star (New Rivers Press, 1988), Horse of Earth (Holy Cow! Press, 1994), The Dark Indigo Current (Holy Cow! Press, 2000), Winter Hours (Red Dragonfly Press, 2005), Waking Before Dawn (Red Dragonfly Press, 2007), THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW (Red Dragonfly Press, 2010), THE GLORY (Red Dragonfly Press, 2015), Windy Day at Kabekona: New and Selected Prose Poems (White Pine Press, 2018) and STORM ISLAND (Red Dragonfly Press, 2020). He has also edited several books, most recently Airmail: The Letters of Robert Bly and Tomas Tranströmer (Graywolf Press, 2013). His prose work, Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival, is newly published by Folded Word Press. He teaches poetry at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.
Author City: RIVER FALLS, WI USA