DESTRUCTION OF MAN

Willie Nelson sang for Farm Aid and it didn't work: this won't either: yet this is a book: a book about farming and a family man and a familiar county--stung body; stung land--as told by a tweaked-to-warble farm machine that ate a human arm, and the chicken ate what's left, and the hawk ate what's left, and then the hawk died of old age.

About the author

Abraham Smith is the author of four poetry collections: Ashagalomancy (Action Books, 2015); Only Jesus Could Icefish in Summer (Action Books, 2014); Hank (Action Books, 2010); and Whim Man Mammon (Action Books, 2007). In 2015, he released Hick Poetics (Lost Roads Press), a co-edited anthology of contemporary rural American poetry and related essays. His creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA, and the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Destruction of Man, his book-length poem about farming, is forthcoming in Spring 2018 from Third Man Books. This fall, Smith joins the Weber State University community as an Assistant Professor of English.

Summary

Willie Nelson sang for Farm Aid and it didn't work: this won't either: yet this is a book: a book about farming and a family man and a familiar county--stung body; stung land--as told by a tweaked-to-warble farm machine that ate a human arm, and the chicken ate what's left, and the hawk ate what's left, and then the hawk died of old age.

Foreword

* Smith will be touring with Third Man related artists such as Margo Price, Lillie Mae and more.

* Smith has always toured on his own and will continue to do so. He will be appearing AWP 2018, Mission Creek Festival, SXSW, Willie Nelson's Luck ranch (tentative), plus dates in Chicago, NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco (City Lights), Detroit, Nashville, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Atlanta, Georgia, Oxford, Mississippi, and more.

We have commitments for blurbs from Drive by Truckers lead singer Patterson Hood and poets Tyehimba Jess (Pulitzer Prize) and Juliana Spahr (Hardison Poetry Prize).

* We are interested in co-op

*We are also very interested in p&p (ie dumps) displays etc.

* Reviews and Publicity: We will be hiring an outside publicist to complement our own in house publicity. Galleys will be mailed to 200 reviewers and also available for request. Periodicals and webpages who will be receiving copies are The Believer, The New York Times, Coldfront, The New Yorker, Rumpus, Boston Review, Vice, Los Angeles Times, Rain Taxi, Bookslut, Paris Review.

Media: A trailer for the book itself plus multiple videos for select poems will be produced. We have also professionally filmed Abraham Smith reading the book in its entirety. The film is a three hour tour d force of poetry, images, and flying sweat. We will be releasing parts of the film leading to the release of the book, and then the film in its entirety.

Professional videos for both a single poem from the collection and a trailer for the general book will be made.

* Different celebrities from the TMR family will be contacted to participate ifor blurbs .We will be approaching celebrities such as: Patterson Hood and Margo Price.

Social Media: TMB and TMR use all social media platforms regularly to post reviews, excerpts and profiles related to TMB authors. We also have sent exclusive audio downloads of select authors to our Vault subscription service. This download is always accompanied by blurbs, photos, links to relevant sites, and author bio.
*Third Man Books Twitter 2,358 Followers
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*Third Man Records.com receives an average 3500 visits per day
*Third Man Records Instagram has 64k Followers
*Third Man Books.com is housed within ThirdManRecords.com

Additional text

"I’ve been unable to decide if the best way to describe this book is as punk gone agrarian or if the agrarians went punk and got some politics or if Gertrude Stein went eco or if thrash metal went intellectual or if Whitman rapped with Busta Rhymes and they both agreed to rap about a lot of small animals because that is suddenly where it’s at. But whatever it is, Destruction of Man is like all of Abraham Smith’s work something full of many many words and weirdness and tradition and it might also be prophecy." — Juliana Spahr, author of The Winter the Wolf Came

Abraham Smith uses his words like a rhythmic sledgehammer upside the head. Brilliant stuff that merges poetry and performance art.
— Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers

Part song, part guttural wail into the American rural landscape, Destruction of Man is a breathtaking lyric that's as complex and heartbreaking as the country itself. Smith has long been a lauded preacher of the trees, praiser of the woods, but this is his finest work yet as he makes a new form to sing of both the beauty and the mess. — Ada Limón, author of Bright Dead Things

Abraham Smith's Destruction of Man is a compass setting toward musics caught between the hungry teeth of vole and buried bone of river. It nestles a bloodline of tonked and battered rhyme while conjuring a clabbered American Karma into silos of riveted storm. Spackled with image and strung out like a laundry line of ghost furious prayer, this book will carry you wild when you surrender to its eddies and breaks. Dive head in and leave caution to the shore. — Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Olio.

Product details

• Authors: Abraham Smith, Smith Abraham
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.04.2018
• EAN: 9780997457810
• ISBN: 978-0-9974578-1-0
• Dimensions: 184 mm x 228 mm x 13 mm
• Weight: 302 g
• Illustrations: photos taken by the poet of the farm he works on and that inspired the conceit of the book.
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; POETRY / General, POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Death, Grief, Loss, Poetry / Poems