Messenger: Poems - Softcover

Smith, R. T.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807126756 ISBN 13: 9780807126752

Publisher: LSU Press, 2001

Synopsis

A companion volume to his previous collection Trespasser and the second book of the trilogy “Dreaming in Irish,” Messenger continues R. T. Smith’s exploration of the threshold between story and song. Employing a disciplined and echoing free verse, Smith touches the sources of emotion without losing his poems’ extraordinary composure, offering coherence and order in service of the ecstatic note.

Binding the lyric to narrative, these poems move almost imperceptibly from delicate descriptions of the poet’s native southern landscape to memories of a tender boyhood amid Scots-Irish relatives to the customs and politics of contemporary Ireland. They invoke Audubon, Bartram, Dickey, Poe, and Joyce to pursue the mythic patterns behind everyday circumstances and the joyful possibilities in work, music, and family life.

Smith weaves the language of Catholic faith with both American and Irish rural surroundings, providing the fuel for quiet allegories. He listens and observes, and seeks to bridge the chasm between his world and his words, exercising what he calls

a desire old as cave paintings,
the wish to entice some wild thing
and make beauty local,
to bring something graceful

close to the language of home.

About this title

About the Author:

R. T. Smith grew up in North Carolina and Georgia, now lives in Rockbridge County, Virginia, and frequently travels to Ireland. The author of eleven poetry collections―including Trespasser and Split the Lark―and one book of short stories, he edits the literary quarterly Shenandoah for Washington and Lee University.

From Booklist:

In "Messenger," Smith reports that, when he "was not yet ten," an angel told him, "'You must say your life to save it.'" These vivid, musical poems demonstrate that he took the message to heart. He doesn't, however, say so much as sing. Sonorous assonances and chiming alliterations make Smith's work much more rhythmical and, hence, memorable than its quasi-free-verse appearance portends. "Savor of Moss," the first of the book's three sections, contains mostly reflections about nature, especially how utterly universal it is, resistant to the transcendental bullying of the likes of "Father Mike / hot with the Gospel." "Human Salt" includes "Messenger" among other personal memories rife with natural and transcendental conflicts and collaborations. The poems in "Spectator," fostered by a heritage-seeking sojourn in Ireland, prove less compelling because the Yank in Ireland has become such a stock situation that it's hard not to hear Enja or the Chieftains cranking away on the mind's soundtrack as you read them. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0807126756
• ISBN 13: 9780807126752
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 88