I Am Your Lifeguard - New and Selected Poems

Drawing on nine previous collections and including nearly fifty new poems, Charlie Smith's I Am Your Lifeguard marks the return of one of our most honest and unorthodox poets. The poems in this collection expose jagged truth: some are love letters; some focus our attention on beauty we may have otherwise missed, stepped over, or cast aside; some tell us secrets we may want to carry in a locket; some are X-ray readings of our hearts; some are laugh-out-loud funny; some are quiet revelations. Above all, these poems are expansively, radically compassionate.
I Am Your Lifeguard is prophetic and prescient, exquisitely descriptive of what it means to be human, and astonishingly attentive to beauty found even in the most derelict places. This collection is a stunning retrospective from an award-winning writer of "scalding aortal brilliance" (New York Times Book Review).

About the author

Charlie Smith is the author of nine previous poetry collections, eight novels, and a book of novellas. He has won a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, among other honors. He lives in New York City.

Product details

• Authors: Charlie Smith
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 10.02.2026
• EAN: 9781324118176
• ISBN: 978-1-324-11817-6
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Poetry, POETRY / American / General, POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Death, Grief, Loss, Poetry / Poems, Literature of the United States of America (USA), poet;poem;poetry collection