Declarations of Hunger

"How can a thing glint even as it's still? Ask Reed Smith. He speaks the dying language of morning light, rivers, burlap shadows, and coyotes' "early barks [...] slapping flatwater," inspects all our dust and rot and manages yet to marvel. Reading Declarations of Hunger felt like slipping along in a secret canoe, deep in a landscape of grief and tenderness, where the marsh hawk stares back and "truth always makes a curve." I think we can trust this voice-its intimacy as much as its restraint. Smith's poems get good and close, enough to hear the rasp of snake scales and to be honest about what a man sees in the mirror. To warn us about fingers in the hourglass. To test every door." -Allison Adair, author of The Clearing "Smith reminds us that until we can divest from our massy entailments, our dis-eased and "loculated bodies" persist with their sad animal hunger, drawing sustenance from the nitrate- and blood-soaked earth. America remains mostly fields-even as we marginalize them in our digitally obsessed cultural imaginary-ravaged by weather and industry, where "Fermented / in Disneyworld bacteria, embryos fasciculate / in polluted foam." These poems combat the trivialization of our food's origins and the fates of our waste, knowing the earth is a record of our devastations, yet our hope for survival." -Joe Fletcher, author of The Hatch "Some poetry slows time to a crawl, the intonation of an image or phrase a kind of musculature developing right before your very eyes. You can sense the perspiration, the struggle of becoming, each breath thickening the air. "Drink its water / and the universe expands invisibly / inside you." Spirit is a thing we make unto ourselves, and Declarations of Hunger is full of spirit. The world teeters on its fulcrum and Smith takes note, a kind of bravery in witness. This man's heart hits you like an ambush." -Joe Pan, author of Florida Palms