These poems deftly depict, from Eve’s point of view, a contemporary vision of the aftermath of the mythic “failure” in obedience which lost the fabled garden of perfection. In twelve wonderfully crafted poems, Smith reveals an empowered and self-determined Eve: an explorer who has taken control of her own story and appears rightfully unashamed to set out into the wilderness as the male pioneers who claimed sole authorship before her. Through the lens of Smith’s collection, what was once depicted as the wilderness is finally starting to come into view as the garden made new.
USPOCO BOOKS is proud to present No. 3 in The Travvis Largent Chapbook Series: Queen and Stranger, by Sara Jeanine Smith.
In Queen and Stranger, Sara Smith explores the inner and outer landscapes of being alive in the world—at once planetary and domestic, secular and sacred, these poems are spatial meditations on the broadest possibilities of heart, hearth, and home. Enter this book and feel what’s there—a singular and authentic voice, expansive, but ever rooted in the rhizome of her matriarchal line. Tiny hymns of truth and grace, absent of artifice and pretention, take us beyond words and show us how to be at peace in the “nowhere quite tangible.” This mother, granddaughter, sister, friend, and spiritual seeker is wise and alert to the nuanced rhythms of her home, which includes the “backwater” wilds that are always present, like a “swamp that once reigned and still creeps, unruly, into the margins of the subdivisions.” –Jamey Jones, former Poet Laureate of Northwest Florida
- “Somehow” in South Florida Poetry Journal
- “Eve” and “A Man Gets in Line at the Thrift Store” in South Florida Poetry Journal
- “Altar” in Gyroscope Review
- “Every White Star” in Barely South Review
- “How to Make Your Own Face Mask” in Not Very Quiet
- “Yazoo City, Mississippi” and “When a Heart Is Compelled” in Pidgeonholes
- “Imprint” in Roanoke Review
- “Golgotha” in Psaltery and Lyre
- “God of the Gaps” in The Stirling Spoon
Sara Jeanine Smith 