000			01879nam a22002174a 4500
001			015869
005			20231009192231.0
008			111201s2011 ilu 000 p eng c
010			_a2010027119
020			_a9780226764351
042			_apcc
050	0	0	_aPS3569.M512 _bD48 2011
082	0	0	_a811.54 SMI
100	1		_aSmith, Bruce
245	1	0	_aDevotions _c/ Bruce Smith
260			_aChicago ; _aLondon _b: University of Chicago Press _c, 2011
300			_ax, 88 p. _c; 23 cm.
520			_aSmith's energetic, muscular and all-around superb sixth collection appears to contain almost everything. The onrushing poems in long-lined free verse, long sentences and longer lists address the most intimate subjects-"the faces of all those you love while you're loving/ the one you love"-along with the most far-flung: his book throws down an almost Whitmanesque challenge to anyone who says that present-day poetry cannot see America whole. As in earlier books, Smith (Songs for Two Voices) does well by the grittier, and the more macho, people and things of these States, such as "an ex-con... on parole, careful to defer to the pushy,/ the striving, the vaulting who have inherited the earth since his send up/ for his crimes." Several pages look with a hard tenderness at townscapes and people of the old industrial heartland, from the pollution, corruption, and rock and roll clubs of 1980s Providence, R.I., to present-day Syracuse, N.Y. (where Smith teaches). But he is never narrow, nor single-minded: global climate change and the scope of all history ("We were the infinite apes at infinite keyboards"), the sonnet and the history of sonnets, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, 9/11, a Chinese restaurant in Alabama, high school shop class, maternal elegy, Pindaric ode, and stellar astronomy all light up at least a page.
650		4	_aPoetry, American
942			_cMO
999			_c233848 _d233848