Book Launch: Demo by Charlie Smith (POSTPONED)

With DEMO, award-winning poet Charlie Smith moves through shades of darkness and light to capture a refracted view of a disturbed, disintegrating world. Smith’s new collection explores landscapes both natural and urban, probing the spaces where the two interact. Its narrator is at once wanderer and witness, living among streets where flowers are covered with dust, and smells of Mexican food and Chinese cooking fill the air. The poet finds a resurgence of life in the ruins, reminding us once again “that we don’t really know what beauty is until we’ve looked hard at the horror that throws beauty into bright relief” (New York Times). In DEMO, Smith conveys a kinetic expression of hope that transcends human vagaries and machinations.

From “The Casing”:

The sun, an old friend, eased

onto the brickyard wall. I sensed an era

drawing to a close. Something told me,

so I said, to gather my things. Smoothed-

over ideas, frets, a capacity for change

unremarked by others, a boarding house

menu I used for a text, my bindle, palpebral musings,

a burial suit of lights

and a jar of brandied apricots–all these

I said I’d send a van back for and never did.