Crystal Simone Smith

~for Ray Foddrell
I had an uncle who dreamt
of being an entrepreneur
but settled into industrial work.

Like a factory conveyer belt
he became nothing more
than an instrument of the process.

He drove rigs filled with some
entrepreneur's products,
hours upon hours, a dull drone

abiding. He never had wealth.
But unlike the CEO he had
time to bring a rig

over Colorado highlands,
pull it onto the shoulder,
and quell its black exhaust

in a scape of gemstone blues,
crystal lakes mirroring
glacier snowcaps — time to step

down not into a stalled life
but one delivered here
in God's cupped hands.
from the book DOWN TO EARTH / Longleaf Press
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As a young Vietnam veteran, my uncle returned home embarking on several business ventures. With no success and crippling debt, he never lost his zeal for entrepreneurialism. A plant machine operator for decades and then a truck driver, he often peddled his ideas to a new generation. I learned to listen beyond the wild, risky concepts visited upon me. He was a passionate spirit—a true champion of the dream.

Crystal Simone Smith on "Industrial Work"
Cover image of Cynthia Cruz's book, Hotel Oblivion
"I Am Never Not Singing"

"Through Hotel Oblivion, Cruz expands and transcends the interiority of the lyrical 'I,' achieving a fresh and vital depiction of the I-Thou relationship in poetry. This is a wholly original book, one in which Cruz’s luminous music attains a self-realized language singing out of the disaster."

via LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS
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Cover image of Michele Glazer's book, "fretwork"
What Sparks Poetry:
Rob Schlegel on Michele Glazer's fretwork


"In an explanation of the process the multidisciplinary artist Saul Melman uses in his Anthropocene Series (featured on the cover of fretwork) Glazer writes, 'The artist sets a process in motion, but the materials have the last word.' It's a deeply instructive metaphor for how Glazer allies with language to create poems that feel and sound as though she is tapping into a frequency just beyond herself."
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