Customer Reviews

Trespasser: Poems

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There isn't a poet working now who is more precise or evocative than R. T. Smith. In Trespasser he turns his eye to the Irish landscape and culture and tunes his ear to the music of their weather and their talk. In one poem, he finds all the violence of the Troubles momentarily arrested in a Waterford vase. In another, the narrator witnesses the death of a young fisherman amid the sweep and beauty of Irish waters. In yet another, the poet mourns for all the women who were incarcerated in Magdalen laundries for supposed misbehavior. Phrase after phrase, this poet's words drill to the essence of alarming circumstances, but he never sounds like a foreigner imposing his personality on Irish culture. Instead, he's like his own creation, a monk named Gristle, who looks in the nooks and crannies of the place and the language and finds something there that will outlast all the noisy suffering of a lot of Smith's contemporaries. The crowning achievement of the book is probably the poem "Lucia," about the daughter of James Joyce. Smith has given us a version of that tortured girl that will stay with me for a long time.

This is one of the finest and most beautiful poetry books I have ready in years. The Poem about Magdalene Laundry moved me to tears. Mr. Smith is obviously one of the foremost American writers today. His poetry is sometimes elusive to those who do not have a firm grasp on literature and poetry. He will be remembered as one of Americas finest Poets. Dive and prepare to think and enjoy! This book is one of my treasures.

I don't agree with the earlier review here that says this book is not exceptional. However, the beauty of poetry is that everyone sees what the poet intended through different eyes. One critic described R.T. Smith's poetry as "...language played by a virtuoso." Wish I'd been the one to say it first, but I just recently discovered Smith's work and decided to begin my exploration with Tresspasser. This book is beautiful and haunting, mysterious as runic stones and Celtic petroglyphs. Smith shares Ireland's essence through his words and takes
readers with him on the journey.

In "Waterford", for example, he regards a crystal pitcher and longs for the:
...clarity of this Irish
vessel, fragile and dazzling
in my trespassing hands.

"Leabai" is one mortal's lyrical penitence as he searches for the lost, beautifully expressed in this excerpt:
...and I climbed over hare
terraces and stiles to reach
this place by twilight,
to touch the high crosses
and lie on pocked limestone,
to ask for secrets the clover
keeps, answers deep in bone
and crozier, a red-letter
Gospel gone to dust...

...I was riding
the swell and luster to the ruins
of a language, walls and hedges
honeycombing the limestone in obsolete
syntax, but the sea's pitch and wind
said grief is the only dialect that
endures...

In "Angels", swallows are transformed by their grace and the poet's imagination:
...Backlit
to dazzlement by afternoon
sunlight, they embroider
the air...

And in "Sect", Smith visits a Shaker village and discovers troubling truths about himself while contemplating their lifestyle:
...is it the wind from junipers
and changing maples
or my own heart's edge
that makes me look back and shiver so?
I too have devoted too much to order,
the immaculate and severe.

If one can have a favorite in such a fine array of poems, mine was "The Hard Word." To me it was the epitome of what makes Smith's work shine. I chose these excerpts as an example:
...The copper
beeches grieve in wind-
whet as the high cross
catches in its ring a cry
from the stammering air.

I could utter love
or that hard word marriage,
birdsong I still wish
to catch, but what I'm
after is a woman more
warm than stone, fingers
tangling mine to braid,
the small rain raining
as in the ancient poem,
and I in my bed again,
warming and nestled,
purged of rage, shriven,
and finally kissed.

Spiritual and universal truths do not vary regardless of continent or belief system. R.T. Smith finds a common language in his poetry and shares his visions flawlessly. Highly recommended.

This is an unexceptional example of the workman-like verse that too often passes these days for poetry. R.T. Smith may occassionally write a decent line, but his poems are never able to rise above the level of the literal. He seems to have no notion of how language works figuratively. Anyone who is looking for a poetry with any spiritual or mythic depth will find this book a large waste of time. In concept and execution these poems are mediocre at best. Indeed, to say that is to be kind.