The Late World (Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series)
"The measure of Art Smith's maturity is the fine harrowing of his poems. By harrowing, I mean to say his poems are crisp, even austere in their lyric concision. Few contemporary poets can say so much in saying so little. But also I mean to identify the wrenching loss these awe-filled poems confront, as though the decay of time—the deaths, the divorces, the body's cruel atrophy—were the clearest measure of our fates. Yet it's how he thinks and what he sees after this insight that marks the achievement of Smith's imagination in The Late World. Even as the gods watch ('Can't you hear them laughing?'), even as the ancient poets seem bemused that 'the woman I love has gone to hell,' lives go and people, even in pain, persist. This beautiful, ageless irony has become Art Smith's song. 'How little lasted,' he says, 'and how long.'" (David Baker)