Customer Reviews

Lake Michigan And Other Poems

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Jared Smith's Lake Michigan and Other Poems is a marvelous find. These poems have a seriousness and command of language that comes only with deep insight and deep talent. Few things are more exciting than finding a book of poetry so good you wonder why you haven't heard of the poet. I don't read poetry much because I don't like the obscure, doctrinaire, or wonder-of-my-pain stuff that so frequently comes from MFA trained poets.

Mr. Smith is different. He writes about Lake Michigan in the title poem of the collection and writes about it the way Walt Whitman wrote about America--celebrating its force, depth, reality. Jared Smith makes, lets, forces us, to experience the power and mystery and necessity of the lake (and other depths) at the heart of the heart of the country. He understands place. He understands place in the way we need to understand place. Even if that place is rusting and forgotten. He gets at how place is in our gut.

These poems have been thought about. They have been felt. Lived. Talent helps and Mr. Smith has plenty of talent. He can write, "My whole life has been controlled by ghosts," and when we finish the poem of that name, we know how real those ghosts are.

The absolutely remarkable poem, "Driving Small Town America" starts:

what is it to play michaelangelo's adam
and reach out a sistine finger
to BOMB
with a fingertip
when nothing comes back at you?

The poem ends:
In the begining is the word
and it is BOMB

I haven't read better commentary on the Iraq war than that and I read allot.

Other poems deal with solitude, grown children, lost or changed relationships. Smith knows the loneliness and hardness that underlies and surrounds most of life. He does not show it off. Pain and deep-living of life have been transmuted into art.

Lake Michigan and Other Poems is remarkable. I keep it by my bed so I can read and reread. That's the highest compliment I give a book.