I Am Your Lifeguard: New and Selected Poems

“For pure, raw power of language, nobody in his generation comes close to Charlie Smith” (David Bottoms).

Drawing on nine previous collections and including nearly fifty new poems, Charlie Smith’s I Am Your Lifeguard marks the return of one of our most honest and unorthodox poets. The poems in this collection expose jagged truths: some are love letters; some focus our attention on beauty we may have otherwise missed, stepped over or cast aside; some tell us secrets we may want to carry in a ...