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Touchstones
You really must read Thomas Smith’s “Tiny Autobiography in Ten Books,” the latest post on his blog. The books he mentions are worth knowing about, if you don’t already, and his comments are both insightful and charming.Read More
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Kooser Spotlights Smith
Good to see Thomas R. Smith get some wider recognition.Read More
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Thomas R. Smith’s New Site
Just a head’s up that one of my favorite poets, Thomas R. Smith, has a new Web site.Read More
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An Homage to Bill Knott
Readers of this blog know that one of my favorite poets is Bill Knott, whose latest collection I recently reviewed for The Bloomsbury Review. In response to that review, my friend and fellow poet Thomas R. Smith sent along his own trenchant homage to Knott. The poem is due to appear in a future issue of Tundra: THE ARTISTFor Bill Knott Crown-of-thorns time is over.You should be taken down,entombed and risen by now—you who walk these empty streetswith your palms unbroken, still searchingfor someone to crucify you.Read More
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Poetry for a World Worth Living In
I’ve been reading Albert Camus—the daily Camus, author of many pointed, intellectually rich and often prescient editorials and articles for the underground French newspaper Combat, 165 of which have recently been published by Princeton University Press. You may be wondering what this has to do with poetry: bear with me. Camus has long been a personal hero of mine—a man devoted to the idea that politics must be based on morality, and to the conviction that human moral values can be discovered and enacted without reliance on a Church.Read More