Touché

by Rod Smith

Overview

With a mix of political commentary and lyricism in a range of forms, Touché evokes an adrenaline rush as the reader is swept up into Rod Smith's unique blend of humor.

I am no I I slight

I've taught myself to unwrite
& then wreathed, saturate, blank
the severed glinting worlds rebelieve
or they all access overall not-so, a not-so
lucid, a lucid one, the squirrels that I live there
^.^ ~ alright then, alright mr squirrel there, yep.

Rod Smith edits the journal Aerial, publishes Edge Books, and manages Bridge Street Books in Washington, DC. Smith co-edited The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley, (University of California Press, 2014).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781940696089
Publisher:	Wave Books
Publication date:	04/07/2015
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 9.40(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Rod Smith edits the journal Aerial, publishes Edge Books, and manages Bridge Street Books in Washington, DC. He has taught at the The Iowa Writers' Workshop, The Maryland Institute College of Art, The Corcoran College of Art + Design, and George Mason University. Smith co-edited The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley (University of California Press, 2014).

Table of Contents

The Birds of America
The Story of Mang Gong
Poem
I am no I I slight
Police Poem
In a Station of the Metro
dumb poem
Needed a Kite &
Oren Gates
PoÔem
PoÔem 2
Hmm. (PoÔem 3)
PoÔem 4
Poem
Breathing Machine
The Good House, etc.
Poem
By the time everything became what we saw wasn’t clear
re-spot
Summer Poem
Moldy Fruition
Camel Light
Norvo
Farlow
Oleo
manIFpesto
Find the job that’s right for you.
A Net
Raveled
Snoopy’s Hopeful Pencil
4201 Stringfellow Rd Basis Point Badgeless & Blonde
L’identité est la cause des verrues
[screened in]
Pygal Shield
The Lyric Republican
Elitist Crap Bag
“Squeeze the Eagle Club”
Ordinance Disposal Satellite
Me’s Wittl Birdy Bong Stowy
win
Buoyancy
Poem
Infinity Revisited
Black Marble
A Fire
beed
This is such total bullshit.
Time
Story
Nordic Cudgelhead
There is nothing that is not appropriation.
songed or,
Three Cigarette Poems
10:49 PM
Dimmer’s Data for Your Dad’s Dumb Idea about a Dumpster
Go With Your Gut
Poem (A Chance of Rain)
Treatise on Consequences

Editorial Reviews

08/03/2015
Smith (Deed), an editor, publisher, and bookseller with three decades' worth of textual experiments to his name, sets new poetic challenges with these flirty, agile, and occasionally sarcastic poems. Sometimes he makes fun of the digital age: "Loops of the small bowel/ fight spam on the Internet." Sometimes he opens up a pair of words to find hidden import: "Between tortoise and torture you'll/ find and analyze a repetition fetish/ & accidental death." Coherence is something his "wholemeal halfwits in the bunker silo's/ frontal sinus palate polojama" have to seek, and not always something they find. Instead, alert or adrift in their linguistic games, Smith's pages imitate a kind of anarchy, delighting in chaos and inviting us in: his "house/ has a learning & the house/ has a viewfinder—the best/ thing in the house though/ is an anklet," he muses. His jazzy absurdities talk back to the Flarf poets and the earlier L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writers, but their freewheeling aims bring them at least as close to earlier kinds of aural experiment. Smith's all-over-the-place phrases and apparent stochastic effects will repel some readers, but others will certainly feel at home, saying—along with the poet—"we are the unlikely beings/ & our secret/ is not to// talk about any one thing." (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly