Smote

by James Kimbrell

Overview

"Smote is a book of the dark reality of our daily existence; it is a book of abiding grace."—Robert Olen Butler

I release you like the crank-addled truck driver releases his cargo at the midnight dock until the warehouse is one in a trail of crumbs, little light left on behind him.

James Kimbrell is the author of The Gatehouse Heaven and My Psychic, and the co-translator of Three Poets of Modern Korea. He been the recipient of the Discovery/The Nation Award, a Whiting Award, a fellowship from the NEA, and a Morton Prize.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941411094
Publisher:	Sarabande Books
Publication date:	10/13/2015
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

James Kimbrell is the author of The Gatehouse Heaven and My Psychic, and the co-translator of Three Poets of Modern Korea. He is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, and a past recipient of the Discovery / The Nation Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

1

Free Checking! 7

So Many Stories 8

How to Tie a Knot 9

Pluto's Gate: Mississippi 11

Take Me As I Am 16

Ode: Feeling Up My Friend's Sister at the Moment Their Drunken Father Begins the Dog Slaughter The Starting Point 20

2

Apology after Driving Down Hooker Street Thirty Years after We Moved 25

It Was Like a Movie 28

Smote 34

Apocalyptic Lullaby 36

The Full Ratio 38

Roots 40

My Father's Friends Travel from the Afterlife to Attend His Memorial 46

Elegy for My Mother's Ex-Boyfriend 47

Kingfish 50

3

Love Letter to You, Dear Reader 61

Elegy for the Epic 63

O Anna Lynn, You Must Have Known Afterlife 66

Chicken Brick'n 67

There's Nothing Wrong with You 69

The Guitar Boat 71

Not Soul 72

Heuristic for the Nearsighted 74

The Author 75

Editorial Reviews

"Kimbrell (My Psychic) pushes his readers to the limit in his frenetic and unceasingly visceral third collection....Kimbrell's poems will doubtless come crashing back as unexpected, haunting nodes of language."
—Publishers Weekly

"The poems in Smote speak of loss and the wanting of more life.... [Kimbrell] lets us feel what cannot be expressed, by any words."
—NewPages


"Kimbrell (My Psychic) pushes his readers to the limit in his frenetic and unceasingly visceral third collection....Kimbrell's poems will doubtless come crashing back as unexpected, haunting nodes of language."
—Publishers Weekly

"The poems in Smote speak of loss and the wanting of more life.... [Kimbrell] lets us feel what cannot be expressed, by any words."
—NewPages

From the Publisher