HUNGRY GHOST by Bruce Smith
“No tear gas in the writer, no tear gas in the reader,” writes Bruce Smith. One of America’s most lauded poets, Smith in his new collection plants one depth-charge after another as the poet offers a language capable of conveying the radical underpinnings of our uncertain times. In Buddhist cosmology, hungry ghosts are beings whose appetites can never be satisfied. In Smith’s poems we encounter a vision of a nation composed of individuals always longing for more: “I wanted more range, maybe, more bliss.” From Whitman and Dickinson to Rihanna and George Floyd, themes of societal and personal chaos lead to sudden moments of clarity. These haunting meditations, of ruptured narratives and bruised bodies, celebrate resilience, and call for transformation of both self and society. To read Smith is to be tempered, enlivened, moved and inspired.
“No tear gas in the writer, no tear gas in the reader,” writes Bruce Smith. One of America’s most lauded poets, Smith in his new collection plants one depth-charge after another as the poet offers a language capable of conveying the radical underpinnings of our uncertain times. In Buddhist cosmology, hungry ghosts are beings whose appetites can never be satisfied. In Smith’s poems we encounter a vision of a nation composed of individuals always longing for more: “I wanted more range, maybe, more bliss.” From Whitman and Dickinson to Rihanna and George Floyd, themes of societal and personal chaos lead to sudden moments of clarity. These haunting meditations, of ruptured narratives and bruised bodies, celebrate resilience, and call for transformation of both self and society. To read Smith is to be tempered, enlivened, moved and inspired.
“No tear gas in the writer, no tear gas in the reader,” writes Bruce Smith. One of America’s most lauded poets, Smith in his new collection plants one depth-charge after another as the poet offers a language capable of conveying the radical underpinnings of our uncertain times. In Buddhist cosmology, hungry ghosts are beings whose appetites can never be satisfied. In Smith’s poems we encounter a vision of a nation composed of individuals always longing for more: “I wanted more range, maybe, more bliss.” From Whitman and Dickinson to Rihanna and George Floyd, themes of societal and personal chaos lead to sudden moments of clarity. These haunting meditations, of ruptured narratives and bruised bodies, celebrate resilience, and call for transformation of both self and society. To read Smith is to be tempered, enlivened, moved and inspired.
