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A new poetry collection from one of America's most lyric and sonically interesting poets. Abraham Smith's Insomniac Sentinel is a concatenation of sandhill cranes and their haunting deep time dinosaur barking. It is the croon of safety from the heart of Wisconsin. It is an aegis from the violence perpetuated on the young; that the young perpetuate; lurching and launching from tercets, those familiar island letting go sideways, the poems themselves as steady and desultory as sand and people and the places they abide. Insomniac Sentinel is a collision of meter, speed, and experience into auditory sensations that range from the elegiac to the ecstatic to the venomous in Smith's nuanced considerations of blue-collar America. Mirroring the attentions of Midwest arrhythmia in the music of the sandhill cranes, Insomniac Sentinel resonates on temporal frequencies, waves ancient and contemporary, rolling from the throats of giants.
List of contents
CONTENTS
THE INSOMNIAC SENTINEL 7
THEY PAINT 16
SHELL LIFE 22
DOUBLE VISION 29
BRAKE 4 CRANES 35
NATOMY 41
WHY DANCE 47
RIVER BLUES 56
IN TIMES OF LOVELY LOVE 68
IN KEY OF WISH RABBIT SINGS 74
HOODWINK AUBADE 80
YOUR ANCIENT
& FRANKLY BREAKING UNDERWEAR 90
WESTFIELD 95
PURPLE MOUTH LIFE 106
TOUCHSTONE BLUES 109
WHY EAT WHY KILL 121
About the author
Abraham Smith's recent publications include Insomniac Sentinel (Baobab Press, 2023), Dear Weirdo (Propeller Books, 2022), and Bear Lite Inn (New Michigan Press,2020). Away from his desk, he improvises poems inside songs with the Snarlin' Yarns; their records It Never Ends (2023) and Break Your Heart (2020) were released on Mississippi's Dial Back Sound. He lives in Ogden, Utah, where he is associate professor of English and co-director of Creative Writing at Weber State.
Summary
A new poetry collection from one of America's most lyric and sonically interesting poets.
Abraham Smith’s Insomniac Sentinel is a concatenation of sandhill cranes and their haunting deep time dinosaur barking. It is the croon of safety from the heart of Wisconsin. It is an aegis from the violence perpetuated on the young; that the young perpetuate; lurching and launching from tercets, those familiar island letting go sideways, the poems themselves as steady and desultory as sand and people and the places they abide. Insomniac Sentinel is a collision of meter, speed, and experience into auditory sensations that range from the elegiac to the ecstatic to the venomous in Smith’s nuanced considerations of blue-collar America. Mirroring the attentions of Midwest arrhythmia in the music of the sandhill cranes, Insomniac Sentinel resonates on temporal frequencies, waves ancient and contemporary, rolling from the throats of giants.
Foreword
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