Floating on Solitude: THREE VOLUMES OF POETRY (Illinois Poetry Series)

Review\nAfter Drinking Near Muskegon, Michigan
The Ancestor
Antelope Standing, Some Lying
Apples In Early October
Artificial Niggers
August, On The Rented Farm
The Austringer's Dissertation
Azaleas
Back River Easter
Between The Moon And The Sun
Black Widow
Blues For Benny Kid Paret
Chinaberry Tree
Cleaning A Fish
The Collector Of The Sun
The Colors Of Our Age: Pink And Black
Coming Attractions
Convulsion
Corner Room, Hog-scald In The Air
Crab
Crabbing On The Hand Line
Cumberland Station
The Cunner In The Calotype
Dandelions
The Dark Eyes Of Daughters
The Delivery
The Divorce
Dog Dreaming
Dome Poem
A Dream Of A Jacklighter
Dreams In Sunlit Rooms
Driving Home In The Breaking Season
Drunks
Eastern Shore: Smith Island
Elegy In An Abandoned Boatyard
Figure From An Elder Lady
Final Preparations
First Hunt At Smithfield
A Fixation With Birds
For The Polioed Girl Killed By Cottonmouths On Her Birthday
The Funeral Singer
The Gift Of The Second Snow
Going Home: Ben's Church, Virginia
A Gold Of Birds
Goshawk, Antelope
Greenheart Fern
Hath The Drowned Nothing To Dream
Hawaii To Salt Lake City
Hawktree
Hole, Where Once In Passion We Swam
Hospital Memory During Storm
How To Get To Green Springs
In Snow, A Possible Life
In The City Of Wind
In The Yard, Late Summer
The Last Morning
Lee's Statue: Richmond
Looking For The Melungeon
Looming: An Address To Matthew Fontaine Maury
Loon
The Luminosity Of Life
A Memory At The Edge Of Swollen Rivers
Messenger
A Moment Of Small Pillagers
Morning Light: Wanship, Utah
The Movement Of Water At Night
Mud Holes
Night Fishing For Blues
Night, Our Hands Parting The Blue Air
On A Field Trip At Fredericksburg
On The Limits Of Resurrection
One Question, Two Seasons
Over The Ozarks, Because I Saw Them, Stars Came
The Palmreader
The Perspective And Limits Of Snapshots
The Petrified Wood
Picking Cherries
Pine Cones
Pink Slip At Tool And Dye
A Place In The Forest
Playing Ball
A Poem While It Is Raining
The Pornography Box
Rain Forest
Raw Light, Mountain Lake
The Roundhouse Voices
Sailing The Back River
Sea Change: The Rented House At Seal Rock, Oregon
Settlement
The Sex Of Poetry
Si Hugget, Drifting, Ruptured
Snake Sermon
Some Good Luck In Lightfoot
Something The Wind Says Tonight
Song Of The Dutch Insult
The Spring Poem
The Suicide Eater
The Testimony Of Wine
That Moment, Which You Could Love, What Of It
These Promises, These Lost, In Sleep Remain To Us
Tide Pools
The Tire Hangs In The Woods
To Anyone Hunting Agates On A Pacific Beach
The Traveling Photographer: Circa 1880
Treehouse
The True Sound Of The Goshawk
Under The Scrub Oak, A Red Shoe
Undertaker, Please Go Slow
Waiting For Dee In The Diner
Waking Among Horses
Watching An Aircraft Warning Light
The Water Horse
Waving
What The Waterman Prayed
When The Fiddlers Gather
Where We Are Today, You Will Notice Is
White Beach, Black Beach: Buckroe, Virginia
The White Holster
Wildfire
Willows, Pond Glitter
With Walt Whitman At Fredericksburg
With White Hair, They Come
Young Woman, Your Name Is Known
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®\nFrom Publishers Weekly\nForging through this voluminous collection is akin to visiting at length with a charismatic, if highly disturbed, relative. Generally, the poems (from Cumberland Station, 1976; Goshawk, Antelope, 1979; and Dream Flights, 1981) start out presenting facades of well-mannered normalcy, e.g., brief narratives or odes to nature and the sea, but then something shifts and goes terribly right. A sentence turns odd and powerful ("There are many ways to die and one is in the nerve"); a quiet, streak of insanity emerges; a young girl leaves her scent upon a young boy's body. Sometimes a poem pops up that is dangerous from start to finish, such as "The Suicide Eaters" or "Drunks," about a reading at a V.A. hospital for recovering addicts and alcoholics. Smith is highly conscious of word choice. He tinkers with grammar and rhythm just enough to be utterly engaging, leaving the reader exhausted after the visit, but wiser for th