Customer Reviews

Hunter-Gatherer

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What R. T. Smith has that so many other poets lack is a historical imagination. He can imagine himself into the life and times of people like Davy Crockett, Osceola, Matthew Brady and Audubon, and when he conveys to us what they might have thought, he always bases is soundly on what they were likely to have seen. He can do this because he is such an active seer himself. Smith's awareness of the natural world never just stops there. Whether he's observing birds (which he does a lot) or people, he's looking for the signs of their spirits. In "Chickadees" he says: One works at a weed's unspent seed cluster for an hour's better part. Another digs at the shadow side of a rotting log, but the mass perform a dance of vigilance, the habit of persistence framed by quick flight and indelible song.

This quotation is characteristic of Smith's approach to verse. It's economical but suggestive, realistic but hopeful. Smith also writes really well and with a wicked sense of humor about Ireland, where he is constantly learning lessons about the music, the politics and the landscape. And these poems, like his others, always carry an awareness that he is not the first observor, his vision of the world builds on those who have come before him, lightly alluding to other poems and to historians but seldom relying too heavily of reference to do his work for him. If HUNTER/GATHERER has a weakness, it is the book's diversity. Smith uses so many forms and speaks to so many subjects, sometimes I want him to exhaust an impulse and leaves some of the others for later books. Still, this books carries hours of stimulating pleasure and a little healthy discomfort with how we treat our world.