Women of America: Poems FROM THE PUBLISHER
A book-length meditation on the mysteries of what drives the heart by one of America's most distinguished poets. Charlie Smith draws the poems in this volume from the tussle and cry of love, in remembrance of love's journey from fantasy to fact and back again, and in anticipation of loving the way we were meant to.
About the Author:: Charlie Smith is the author of five previous books of poetry, including Heroin. He lives in New York City.
FROM THE CRITICS
Stephen Burt - The New York Times
Like exceptionally passionate diary entries, Smith's poems depict his wanderings from Manhattan to Mexico and across the lost highways in between, remembering more than one ''puerile confession episode'' and asking ''the price'' for his ''latest thoughts, / the going rate for love, and the one where / you spread vast wings and collect the children under them.''
Publishers Weekly
Having run through the exigencies and vicissitudes of Heroin, Smith in this sixth collection turns his bittersweet voice toward love, depicted here as similar to but less dependable than a drug fix, or a meal: "We are tired of arguing about who is most hurt. Better toddle off for a little Chinese." Early in the volume, Smith calls love "dark innuendo"; romance here is painful, beautiful and bodes doom. The poems suggest, murmur and sigh, but they do not wail: "wind/ conveying some new way of life-or nothing important-/ across town, it touches you." The poet of these nearly 50 short lyric narratives is preoccupied by his sense that life is meaningless and love is constructed, to the point where lost loves loom large as the title's mock catch-all. The problem is, since sweet resignation and detachment mark the book most deeply, it is unclear when Smith is being facetious: "among the bean fields of California/ I thought of women and/ preserved this huge interior life for them." As it's presented in this collection, the interior life is intentionally not huge-and not about to win over a potential mate. Despite some inchoate stirrings toward furtherance ("Hard to forget what once we had/ but I'd rather,// rather move on"), the book's pervasive, skillfully slack hopelessness finally collapses into a "nervous, complex/ distancing." (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
In his sixth collection, novelist and poet Smith (Before and After; Heroin and Other Poems) moves away from a focus on his family and into a world of lost loves and shattered connections (with a few pieces about his parents near the end, which are among the weakest in the book). His primary focus here is the world of his own making, "the dark innuendo everyone calls a love life." Even those most lyrical moments are fleeting; "A quiet joy appears amid loneliness, doesn't/ replace it," he warns. Seldom have loss, anger, and self-loathing been so cutting or vividly portrayed. At the same time, he manages to avoid every possible pitfall of confessional poetry, giving almost no particulars of his own life and instead hitting upon those universal images for which each reader must fill in the blanks. These poems are dense, many requiring several readings, but they're rewarding. What he refers to as the "Horror at the heart/ of beauty" may well come back to haunt us all. Highly recommended.-Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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