Before and After: Poems

As both poet and novelist, Charlie Smith has been hailed as "prodigiously talented" by the New York Times, and Madison Smartt Bell describes him as "a spectacular stylist" and "a visionary."Before and After, his fourth volume, is his most powerful collection to date—with poems so short and direct they hit home like a knife to the heart. In Before and After, Smith effectively captures the intimate life of one family—in all its courage, deceit, misery, madness, love, revelation, and rage—and ...