Rod Smith (poet)
Encyclopedia
Rod Smith, who was born in Gallipolis, Ohio
in 1962, is an American poet, editor
and publisher. He grew up in Northern Virginia and moved to Washington, DC in 1987. Smith has authored several collections of poetry, including In Memory of My Theories, Protective Immediacy, and Music or Honesty. He has taught creative writing at George Mason University
where he is finishing his MFA. Smith currently teaches Cultural Studies at Towson University
, and was a visiting writer at the Iowa Writers' Workshop
in the Spring of 2010. Currently, Smith is editing The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley with Kaplan Harris and Peter Baker for University of California Press
.
, a poetry magazine devoted to avant-garde
and experimental writing. Soon after, Smith began publishing books under the name EDGE Books; EDGE takes its name from the first book of poems by American poet Bruce Andrews
. Smith published the first Edge Book in 1989.
After Rod Smith moved to Washington, DC in 1987, he became part of the DC poetry community which included the writers Tina Darragh
, Lynne Dreyer, P. Inman
, Doug Lang, Joan Retallack
, Phyllis Rosenzweig, and others. This group expanded over the years to include such writers as Leslie Bumstead, Jean Donnelly, Buck Downs, Cathy Eisenhower, Heather Fuller, Mark McMorris, Carol Mirakove, Maureen Thorson, Ryan Walker, Mel Nichols, Tom Orange, and Mark Wallace.
During the 1980s Smith began intense self-study in poetry and poetics, particularly Ezra Pound
, Gertrude Stein
, William Carlos Williams
, John Ashbery
, Frank O'Hara
, and George Oppen
. He met John Cage
in Rockville, Maryland in 1987 and saw him regularly, playing chess (usually losing), in Washington and New York until Cage's death in 1992.
Smith’s own poetry is a testament to this intense self-study, for it is written, as Lisa Jarnot
writes, “With the sweeping vision of Whitman
, the noun-play of Gertrude Stein
, and the slant political commentary of the New York School
”. In fact, it demonstrates a lineage spanning through most of the American 'experimental' poetic explorations of 20th Century, from that of the Objectivists
(such as George Oppen
, Charles Reznikoff
or Louis Zukofsky
) to the NY School (Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery
, Kenneth Koch
, James Schuyler
) to Black Mountain
or Beat Generation
poets (such as Ferlinghetti—who inspired one of Smith’s first published poems in the Baltimore Sun in 1982) to his more recent associations and friendships with many of the original Language poets
including Charles Bernstein
, Lyn Hejinian
, Carla Harryman
, and Barrett Watten
. Smith’s work also emerges from visual artistic works, theory, politics, and the writings, musical and other works of John Cage
.
Given his interests and engagements with other writers, it is not unsurprising that Smith managed Bick's Books from 1989 to 1992 and since 1993 has managed Bridge Street Books in Washington. While at Bick's and as a founding curator with Buck Downs, Joe Ross, and Sylvana Straw of the DCAC "In Your Ear" series he organized readings for Charles Bernstein
, Cage, Kevin Davies, Carolyn Forche
, Bob Perelman
, Tom Raworth
, Leslie Scalapino
, Diane Ward
, and others.
The many readers at Bridge Street since 1993 have included Bruce Andrews
, Rae Armantrout
, Anselm Berrigan
, Lee Ann Brown, Norma Cole
, Tim Davis, Peter Gizzi
, Carla Harryman
, Lyn Hejinian
, Lisa Jarnot
, Melanie Neilson, Alice Notley
, Lisa Robertson
, Jennifer K Dick
, David Shapiro
, Juliana Spahr
, Edwin Torres
, and Rosmarie Waldrop
.
Wallace and Steven Marks, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002).
novije americke poezije, ed. Dubravka Djuric et al. (Serbia: Oktoih, 2001).
UK: Barque Press, 2001).
Jarnot, Leonard Schwartz, and Chris Stroffolino, (Hoboken, NJ: Talisman House, 1997).
Wallace, Kristen Prevallet, and Pam Rehm, (Buffalo: Leave Books, 1994).
New Coast, ed. Peter Gizzi, Connell McGrath, and Juliana Spahr, (Stockbridge:
The Garlic Press,1993).
Gallipolis, Ohio
As of the census of 2000, there were 4,180 people, 1,847 households, and 1,004 families residing in the village. The population density was 1,156.2 people per square mile . There were 2,056 housing units at an average density of 568.7 per square mile...
in 1962, is an American poet, editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
and publisher. He grew up in Northern Virginia and moved to Washington, DC in 1987. Smith has authored several collections of poetry, including In Memory of My Theories, Protective Immediacy, and Music or Honesty. He has taught creative writing at George Mason University
George Mason University
George Mason University is a public university based in unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, south of and adjacent to the city of Fairfax. Additional campuses are located nearby in Arlington County, Prince William County, and Loudoun County...
where he is finishing his MFA. Smith currently teaches Cultural Studies at Towson University
Towson University
Towson University, often referred to as TU or simply Towson for short, is a public university located in Towson in Baltimore County, Maryland, U.S...
, and was a visiting writer at the Iowa Writers' Workshop
Iowa Writers' Workshop
The Program in Creative Writing, more commonly known as the Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, is a highly regarded graduate-level creative writing program in the United States...
in the Spring of 2010. Currently, Smith is editing The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley with Kaplan Harris and Peter Baker for University of California Press
University of California Press
University of California Press, also known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish books and papers for the faculty of the University of California, established 25 years earlier in 1868...
.
Publishing and the DC poetry community
In 1984, along with Wayne Kline, Rod Smith began the journal Aerial MagazineAerial (magazine)
Aerial is an influential poetry magazine edited by Rod Smith and published by Aerial/Edge based in Washington, D.C.. Along with the magazine, "Aerial/Edge" publishes Edge Books. The first issue of Aerial appeared in 1984...
, a poetry magazine devoted to avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
and experimental writing. Soon after, Smith began publishing books under the name EDGE Books; EDGE takes its name from the first book of poems by American poet Bruce Andrews
Bruce Andrews
Bruce Andrews is a U.S. poet who is one of the key figures associated with the Language poets .-Life and work:...
. Smith published the first Edge Book in 1989.
After Rod Smith moved to Washington, DC in 1987, he became part of the DC poetry community which included the writers Tina Darragh
Tina Darragh
Tina Darragh is an American poet who was one of the original members of the Language group of poets.Darragh was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in the south suburb of McDonald, Pennsylvania. She began writing in 1968 and studied poetry in Washington, DC at Trinity University from 1970 to 1972...
, Lynne Dreyer, P. Inman
P. Inman
Peter Inman is an American poet who was born in 1947 and raised on Long Island. He is a graduate of Georgetown University. Since 1980 he has worked at the Library of Congress, where he has been a union activist Peter Inman (writing as P. Inman) is an American poet who was born in 1947 and raised...
, Doug Lang, Joan Retallack
Joan Retallack
Joan Retallack is an American poet, critic, biographer, and multi-disciplinary scholar.-Life and work:Joan Retallack received her B.A. from the University of Illinois, Urbana and her M.A. from Georgetown University...
, Phyllis Rosenzweig, and others. This group expanded over the years to include such writers as Leslie Bumstead, Jean Donnelly, Buck Downs, Cathy Eisenhower, Heather Fuller, Mark McMorris, Carol Mirakove, Maureen Thorson, Ryan Walker, Mel Nichols, Tom Orange, and Mark Wallace.
During the 1980s Smith began intense self-study in poetry and poetics, particularly Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
, Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
, William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
, John Ashbery
John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...
, Frank O'Hara
Frank O'Hara
Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...
, and George Oppen
George Oppen
George Oppen was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism, and later moved to Mexico to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee...
. He met John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
in Rockville, Maryland in 1987 and saw him regularly, playing chess (usually losing), in Washington and New York until Cage's death in 1992.
Smith’s own poetry is a testament to this intense self-study, for it is written, as Lisa Jarnot
Lisa Jarnot
Lisa Jarnot is an American poet and translator. She has published several volumes of poetry. She is an anti-war activist, works as a horticulturalist and lives in Sunnyside, Queens.-Bibliography :*The Fall of Orpheus, Shuffaloff Press, 1993....
writes, “With the sweeping vision of Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, the noun-play of Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
, and the slant political commentary of the New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
”. In fact, it demonstrates a lineage spanning through most of the American 'experimental' poetic explorations of 20th Century, from that of the Objectivists
Objectivist poets
The Objectivist poets were a loose-knit group of second-generation Modernists who emerged in the 1930s. They were mainly American and were influenced by, amongst others, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams...
(such as George Oppen
George Oppen
George Oppen was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism, and later moved to Mexico to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee...
, Charles Reznikoff
Charles Reznikoff
Charles Reznikoff was the poet for whom the term Objectivist was first coined. When asked by Harriet Munroe to provide an introduction to what became known as the Objectivist issue of Poetry, Louis Zukofsky provided his essay Sincerity and Objectification: With Special Reference to the Work of...
or Louis Zukofsky
Louis Zukofsky
Louis Zukofsky was an American poet. He was one of the founders and the primary theorist of the Objectivist group of poets and thus an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.-Life:...
) to the NY School (Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery
John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...
, Kenneth Koch
Kenneth Koch
Kenneth Koch was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77...
, James Schuyler
James Schuyler
James Marcus Schuyler was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1980 collection The Morning of the Poem...
) to Black Mountain
Black Mountain poets
The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College.-Background:...
or Beat Generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
poets (such as Ferlinghetti—who inspired one of Smith’s first published poems in the Baltimore Sun in 1982) to his more recent associations and friendships with many of the original Language poets
Language poets
The Language poets are an avant garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s...
including Charles Bernstein
Charles Bernstein
Charles Bernstein is an American poet, theorist, editor, and literary scholar. Bernstein holds the Donald T. Regan Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets . In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American...
, Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian is an American poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is well known for her landmark work My Life , as well as her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry .-Life:Hejinian was born in the San...
, Carla Harryman
Carla Harryman
Carla Harryman is an American poet, essayist, and playwright often associated with the Language poets. She teaches Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University and serves on the MFA faculty of the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College...
, and Barrett Watten
Barrett Watten
Barrett Watten is an American poet, editor, and educator often associated with the Language poets.Since 1994, Watten has taught modernism and cultural studies at Wayne State University in Detroit...
. Smith’s work also emerges from visual artistic works, theory, politics, and the writings, musical and other works of John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
.
Given his interests and engagements with other writers, it is not unsurprising that Smith managed Bick's Books from 1989 to 1992 and since 1993 has managed Bridge Street Books in Washington. While at Bick's and as a founding curator with Buck Downs, Joe Ross, and Sylvana Straw of the DCAC "In Your Ear" series he organized readings for Charles Bernstein
Charles Bernstein
Charles Bernstein is an American poet, theorist, editor, and literary scholar. Bernstein holds the Donald T. Regan Chair in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is one of the most prominent members of the Language poets . In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the American...
, Cage, Kevin Davies, Carolyn Forche
Carolyn Forché
Carolyn Forché is an American poet, editor, translator, and human rights advocate.-Life:Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 28, 1950, to Michael Joseph and Louise Nada Blackford Sidlosky. Forché earned a B.A...
, Bob Perelman
Bob Perelman
Bob Perelman is an American poet, critic, editor and teacher. He is often associated with the Language School group of poets. Perelman is Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.-Life and work:...
, Tom Raworth
Tom Raworth
Tom Raworth is a London-born poet and visual artist who has published over forty books of poetry and prose since 1966. His works has been translated and published in many countries. Raworth is a key figure in the British Poetry Revival. He lives in Brighton, England.-Early life and work:Raworth...
, Leslie Scalapino
Leslie Scalapino
Leslie Scalapino was a United States poet, experimental prose writer, playwright, essayist, and editor, sometimes grouped in with the Language poets, though she felt closely tied to the Beat poets. A longtime resident of California's Bay Area, she earned an M.A. in English from the University of...
, Diane Ward
Diane Ward
Diane Ward is a U.S. poet initially associated with the first wave of Language poetry in the 1970s and has actively published into the 21st century, maintaining a presence in various artistic communities for many decades...
, and others.
The many readers at Bridge Street since 1993 have included Bruce Andrews
Bruce Andrews
Bruce Andrews is a U.S. poet who is one of the key figures associated with the Language poets .-Life and work:...
, Rae Armantrout
Rae Armantrout
Rae Armantrout is an American poet generally associated with the Language Poets. Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California but grew up in San Diego. She has published ten books of poetry and has also been featured in a number of major anthologies...
, Anselm Berrigan
Anselm Berrigan
Anselm Berrigan is a poet and teacher. He grew up in New York City, where he currently resides with his wife, poet Karen Weiser. From 2003 to 2007, he served as artistic director at the St. Mark's Poetry Project...
, Lee Ann Brown, Norma Cole
Norma Cole
Norma Cole is a contemporary American poet, visual artist, and frequent translator from the French. A member of the circle of poets around Robert Duncan in the '80s, and a fellow traveler of San Francisco's language poets, Cole is also allied with contemporary French poets.-Life and work:A...
, Tim Davis, Peter Gizzi
Peter Gizzi
Peter Gizzi is an award-winning American poet and renowned editor of the American poet Jack Spicer. He attended Brown University, New York University and the State University of New York at Buffalo.-Life and career:...
, Carla Harryman
Carla Harryman
Carla Harryman is an American poet, essayist, and playwright often associated with the Language poets. She teaches Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University and serves on the MFA faculty of the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College...
, Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian is an American poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is well known for her landmark work My Life , as well as her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry .-Life:Hejinian was born in the San...
, Lisa Jarnot
Lisa Jarnot
Lisa Jarnot is an American poet and translator. She has published several volumes of poetry. She is an anti-war activist, works as a horticulturalist and lives in Sunnyside, Queens.-Bibliography :*The Fall of Orpheus, Shuffaloff Press, 1993....
, Melanie Neilson, Alice Notley
Alice Notley
Alice Notley is an American poet. She was born in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. She received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1967 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1969. She married poet Ted Berrigan in 1972, with whom she was active in...
, Lisa Robertson
Lisa Robertson (poet)
Lisa Robertson is a Canadian poet who is best known for a collection a poem entitled The Weather, which was inspired by the shipping forecasts announced on BBC radio. She currently lives in France.-Life:...
, Jennifer K Dick
Jennifer K Dick
Jennifer K Dick, American poet, translator and educator/scholar born in Minnesota, raised in Iowa and currently living in Mulhouse, France. Jennifer K Dick has been classified as a post-L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E school poet with a strong background in lyric and narrative tradition.She has taught American...
, David Shapiro
David Shapiro (poet)
David Shapiro is an American poet, literary critic, and art historian. He has written some twenty volumes of poetry, literary, and art criticism...
, Juliana Spahr
Juliana Spahr
Juliana Spahr is an American poet, critic, and editor. She is the recipient of the 2009 Hardison Poetry Prize awarded by the Folger Shakespeare Library to honor a U.S...
, Edwin Torres
Edwin Torres (poet)
Edwin Torres is a "Nuyorican" poet.-Early years:Torres's parents moved from Puerto Rico and settled in the borough of The Bronx in New York City. His father died when he was young and he was then raised by his mother and her brother Martin. Martin provided comfort and family support...
, and Rosmarie Waldrop
Rosmarie Waldrop
Rosmarie Waldrop is a contemporary American poet, translator and publisher. Born in Germany, she has lived in the United States since 1958. She has lived in Providence, Rhode Island since the late 1960s...
.
Poetry
- Deed, (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2007)
- Fear the Sky, (narrow house, 2005)
- Music or Honesty, (New York: Roof Books, 2003).
- Poèmes de l'araignée, (Bordeaux, France: Un bureau sur l'atlantique, 2003).
- The Good House (New York: Spectacular Books, 2001)
- The New Mannerist Tricycle - with Lisa Jarnot & Bill Luoma (Philadelphia: Beautiful Swimmer, 2000)
- Protective Immediacy (New York: Roof, 1999)
- The Lack (love poems, targets, flags...) (Elmwood, CT.: Abacus, 1997).
- In Memory of My Theories (Oakland: O Books, 1996)
- A Grammar Manikan, Object 5: featuring Rod Smith, (New York, NY: Object, 1995).
- The Boy Poems, (Washington, DC: Buck Downs Books, 1994).
in Anthologies
- "A Tract," in "Telling It Slant: Avant-Garde Poetics of the 1990s", ed Mark
Wallace and Steven Marks, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002).
- Four poems from In Memory of My Theories and Protective Immediacy, in Antologija
novije americke poezije, ed. Dubravka Djuric et al. (Serbia: Oktoih, 2001).
- "Ted's Head," in 100 Days, ed. Andrea Brady and Keston Sutherland, (Cambridge,
UK: Barque Press, 2001).
- “4 poems from In Memory of My Theories,” in New (American) Poetry, ed. Lisa
Jarnot, Leonard Schwartz, and Chris Stroffolino, (Hoboken, NJ: Talisman House, 1997).
- "from CIA Sentences," in A Poetics of Criticism, ed. Juliana Spahr, Mark
Wallace, Kristen Prevallet, and Pam Rehm, (Buffalo: Leave Books, 1994).
- “XCII (cinder-sifter)” and poetics statement, in o blek 12: Writing from the
New Coast, ed. Peter Gizzi, Connell McGrath, and Juliana Spahr, (Stockbridge:
The Garlic Press,1993).
External links
- Rod Smith Author Homepage located at the Electronic Poetry Center
- GHOSTBRAIN Smith's Blog which he began in February 2006
- Aerial/Edge Publisher's Page
- Poems by and an interview with Rod Smith