Messenger

A companion volume to his previous collection Trespasser and the second book of the trilogy "Dreaming in Irish," Messenger continues R.T. Smith's exploration of the threshold between story and song. Employing a disciplined and echoing free verse, Smith touches the sources of emotion without losing his poems' extraordinary composure, offering coherence and order in service of the ecstatic note. Binding the lyric to narrative, these poems move almost imperceptibly from delicate descriptions of the poet's native southern landscape to memories of a tender boyhood amid Scots-Irish relatives to the customs and politics of contemporary Ireland. They invoke Audubon, Bartram, Dickey, Poe, and Joyce to pursue the mythic patterns behind everyday circumstances and the joyful possibilities in work, music, and family life. Smith weaves the language of Catholic faith with both American and Irish rural surroundings, providing the fuel for quiet allegories. He listens and observes, and seeks to bridge the chasm between his world and his words, exercising what he calls a desire old as cave paintings, the wish to entice some wild thing and make beauty local, to bring something graceful close to home.

"Smith is his own poet, a writer supremely attentive to nature, and to human nature, one who knows loss but prefers to maintain faish and a measured optimism." - Black Warrior Review"

R. T. Smith grew up in North Carolina and Georgia, now lives in Lexington, Virginia, and frequently travels to Ireland. The author of eleven poetry collections and one book of short stories, he edits the literary quarterly Shenandoah for Washington and Lee University.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.