Above ground : poems

First Title Value for Searching:

Personal Author:

Smith, Clint, 1988-

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

xiv, 107 pages ; 25 cm.

Genre:

Poetry.

Summary:

"Clint Smith's vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world"--

Subject Term:

Fatherhood -- Poetry.

American poetry -- 21st century

American poetry -- African American authors

Publication Info:

New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2023.

Uniform Title:

Poems. Selections

Subject:

Fatherhood -- Poetry.

American poetry -- 21st century

American poetry -- African American authors

Poetry.

African American poetry (English)

American poetry -- Afro-American authors

American poetry -- Negro authors

Black poetry (American)

Negro poetry

SAILS ISBN:

9780316543033

Available:

Library	Shelf Number	Shelf Location	Status
Searching... Norton Public Library	811.6 SMI 2023	DISPLAY	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Attleboro Public Library	811.6 SMI	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Bridgewater Public Library	811 SMITH 2023	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Dartmouth - Southworth	811.6 SMI 2023	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... East Bridgewater Public Library	811.6 SMI 2023	Recommended Reading	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Fall River Main	811.6 S644	Stacks	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library	811.6 SMITH	NEW NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Guilford H. Hathaway, Assonet	811 SMI 2023	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Mansfield Public Library	811.6 SMIT	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Mattapoisett Free Public Library	811.6 SMI 2023	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Plympton Public Library	811.6 SMI	NEW NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Raynham Library	811.6 SMI 2023	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Rochester - Plumb Library	811.54 SMI	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Seekonk Public Library	811.6 SMITH	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Somerset Public Library	811.54 SMI 2023	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown

A remarkable poetry collection with "inextinguishable generosity and abundant wisdom" (Monica Youn) from Clint Smith, the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Critics Circle award-winning author of How the Word Is Passed .

Clint Smith's vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult. Above Ground wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body. Smith's lyrical, narrative poems bring the reader on a journey not only through the early years of his children's lives, but through the changing world in which they are growing up--through the changing world of which we are all a part.

Above Ground is a breathtaking collection that follows Smith's first award-winning book of poetry, Counting Descent .

Reviews (2)

Booklist Review

A poet best known for his critically acclaimed treatise on slavery in the U.S., How the Word Is Passed (2021), Smith returns to verse with a focus on fatherhood, childhood, and race in America. Smith's poems are rich with fond nods to prenatal doctor's appointments and Dr. Seuss and exacting odes to phenomena as tiny as an infant hiccup. He celebrates the unbridled joy of an impromptu supermarket dance party, "we turn the space between Pop / Tarts and Quaker Oats into Showtime at the Apollo." He offers aphorisms that hit hard in light of the climate catastrophe: "The river that gives us water to drink is the same one that might wash us away." And Smith presents a jaw-dropping concrete poem, "For Willie Francis, the First Known Person to Survive an Execution by Electric Chair, 1947," composed in devastating bisyllabic lines that take the shape of an electric chair: "Wet face. / Soft skin. / Mouth shut. / Eyes closed. / Heart beats. / Strapped tight. / Heads bend. / Flips switch. / They think. / Boy breathes."

Library Journal Review

Smith, whose How the Word Is Passed won the 2021 nonfiction National Book Critics Circle Award, returns to poetry in this, his second collection (after Counting Descent). His focus here is on Black fatherhood and the immense responsibility that parenting entails ("When I speak to my son I carry/ the echo of generations") when the "moral arc of the universe/ does not bend in a direction that comforts us." As he watches his young children grow--fragile blossoms of wonder and beauty amid the world's chaos and violence--he wonders how he can protect them, writing: "I am trying to inhale all the smoke/ from this burning world while/ asking you to hold your breath." In candid lyric poems often written in direct address to his son and daughter, Smith exquisitely captures the anxiety, love, uncertainty, and joy that accompany the challenge of nurturing nascent human lives, all the while casting a nervous eye on the unstable natural, social, and political environments they'll inherit. VERDICT While this collection will resonate most deeply with parents, its wisdom, humanity, and sheer eloquence speak to a time and condition all readers will recognize.--Fred Muratori

All at Once	3
Waiting on a Heartbeat	4
FaceTime	6
Passage	8
"It's All in Your Head"	9
Trying to Light a Candle in the Wind	11
When People Say "We Have Made It Through Worse Before"	12
By Chance	13
In the Grocery Store You Are Wrapped Tightly onto My Chest	14
Ode to the Electric Baby Swing	16
Ode to the Infant Hiccup	18
Ode to the First Smile	19
Nociception	21
Your National Anthem	22
For Willie Francis, the First Known Person to Survive an Execution by Electric Chair, 1946	24
Roots	25
Across Generations	26
The Drone	27
Pangaea	28
The New York Times Reports That 200 Civilians Have Just Been Killed by U.S. Military Air Strikes	30
The Great Escape	32
Nomenclature	34
This Is an Incomprehensive List of All the Reasons I Know I Married the Right Person	36
Lines in the Sand	37
And the World Keeps Spinning	38
Tree Rings	40
Here Nor There	41
At the Superdome After the Storm Has Passed	42
It Is Halloween Night and You Are Dressed as a Hot Dog	43
When We Took You to the Beach for the First Time	44
Ode to the Bear Hug	46
For Your First Birthday	48
When We Told You Another Baby Was Coming	50
Legacy	51
Counting Descent II	52
Where Are They Now?	54
I Am Looking at a Photo	56
The First Time I Saw My Grandfather Cry	57
Coming Home	58
Cartography	60
After the Storm They Attempted to Identify the Bodies	61
For the Doctors Records	62
Deceit	64
Expedience	65
For the Doctor's Records-Follow-Up	66
We See Another School Shooting on the News	67
The Gun	68
This Year Was the First Year I Could Not Remember Your Voice	69
Ode to the Double Stroller	70
Gold Stars	72
Zoom School with a Toddler	74
In the Ocean There Is a Small Jellyfish	75
Ossicones	76
You Ask Me What Sounds a Giraffe Makes	78
Yesterday Afternoon I Took You to the Park	79
The Most Remarkable Thing About Dinosaurs	80
Ars Poetica	82
Above Ground	84
Tradition	86
What I've Learned	88
Dance Party	89
The Andromeda Galaxy Is the Closest Galaxy to Our Milky Way	92
Alarm	93
Prehistoric Questions	94
Punctuation	96
Univers(al)	98
Ode to Bedtime	99
Ode to Those First Fifteen Minutes After the Kids Are Finally Asleep	101
When Standing in a Cabin at the Whitney Plantation	102
Look at That Pond	103
Acknowledgments	105
Notes	107

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Summary

Summary

Reviews (2)

Booklist Review

Library Journal Review

Table of Contents