Almanac

Austin Smith was born in the rural Midwest. Most recently, he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University.

• The Silo 5 Queen-Anne's Lace 7 Fort-Da 8 Thistles 10 The Night My Mother 11 How a Calf Comes into the World 13 Lightning 15 Autumn's Velocity 16 The Brinkmeiers 19 Aerial Photograph, Glasser Farm, 1972 20 Dean 22 Coach Chance 24 The Man Accused of Fucking Horses 25 The Bait Shop 26 Memoir of My Imaginary Sister 27 Neon Apotheosis 28 Bingo 31 Stephenson County Fair in Wartime 33 Nancy and Dwayne, Danville, Virginia, 1970 34 Romeo and Juliet in the Tomb 35 The Battlefield 37 The Pit 39 The Man Who Poisoned Robert Johnson 40 Nazi Soldier with a Book in His Pants 41 Sharpener of Knives 43 Overlord 45 The Hotel 48 The Equation 50 Resonance 51 Postcards to Andrew Wyeth 52 Recollection 54 Letter to My Father Written in a Bar in Mitchell, South Dakota 55 On a Greyhound Bus in America 56 Mission 57 The Scythe 58 The Mummy in the Freeport Art Museum 59 Sirens 60 A Serious House on Serious Earth 61 Poem for Les, Homeless 63 Elegy for Missing Teeth 65 Directions for How to Use Crest Whitening Strips 66 The Trencher 68 Instructions for How to Put an Old Horse Down 71 The Key in the Stone 73 Wake 75 Notes 79 Acknowledgments 81

"[A] lucid debut... [S]elf-contained, compact stories [that] will stick in the mind for a while."--Publishers Weekly "Smith's close familiarity with the everyday tragedies of our human existence is recorded in diction that is readily accessible to the average reader, but which has a depth that is capable of resounding through the hearts and souls of his audience, facilitating their response, even if they come from an essentially nonpoetic background... Smith's work is well worth investing in, so do consider acquiring yourself a copy--he is clearly a modern-day poet who deserves your attention."--Lois Henderson, Bookpleasures.com "Almanac by Austin Smith is a magical collection of lyrical poems which mark, and mourn, the passing of a way of life, of the small family farmer, in the rural Midwest... It's a stunning first collection, chosen by Paul Muldoon for the reinvigorated Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets."--Keith Richmond, Tribune "Smith's farm disasters make memorable reading if you care about poetry whether or not you care very much about farms."--Stephen Burt, Yale Review