Sturgeon Moon - by Robert Lavett Smith (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Sturgeon Moon, Robert LAvett Smith's fourth collection, continues to break new ground. The book is in part a memorial to the poet's late father, noted ichthyologist C. Lavett Smith; many of the poems, especially in the opening section, a gathering of sonnets, explore the complex and sometimes bewildering relationship between father and son. But the collection also serves to commemorate the author's sixtieth birthday and, as such, offers a backward glance at a literary journey that now spans forty-five years. While more than threequarters of the poems assembled here are new, one section is entirely devoted to early efforts that the poet feels have continued to resonate down the decades; some of these date back as far as the late 1970s. With a single exception, none of the older poems have ever been included in a book before.

Readers of Mr. Smith's previous work will welcome back a figure familiar from his most recent collection, the irrepressible Reverend Igneous Rock, who returns in twenty-nine new poems. There is a generous assortment of sonnets, and for the first time, there
is a section devoted to the villanelle. Once again, familiar themes recur, recast by the passage of time, and leavened by gradual acceptance: loss, redemption, and the constant struggle to find meaning in a deeply daunting world. Sturgeon Moon is a complex and compassionate collection that will reward multiple readings, and the range of subjects and styles offered here show Robert Lavett Smith to be a poet who continues to grow and develop while always remaining conscious of the ways in which all of our lives
are rooted in memory and shaped by the past.

Review Quotes

"Smith's gift lies in the ability to explore sorrow without being maudlin and in the not seeming constrained even when voluntarily constraining himself to classical poetic forms like the sonnet. Indeed, it's easy to forget, while reading his musings, that they are sonnets, so natural is the language. He's equally at home with free verse, as demonstrated in the chapters of the life of Reverend Igneous Rock--a sardonic character destined, in my opinion, to achieve literary immortality."
--Jeff Kalmar, songwriter and guitarist

"In 'Daybreak In Alabama, ' his response to the Langston Hughes poem of the same name, Robert Lavett Smith confronts, as he so often does in his work, the contradictory forces of joy and pain that are always implicit in life:
. . .there are days
when night gains the upper hand
even in skies so cloudless and clear
you can taste the ripe light on your tongue.
Smith has an appropriate name, because he is quite a
wordsmith. He takes what is simple and straightforward
in the world and somehow makes it eloquent. Sturgeon
Moon is a great piece of writing."
--Buford Buntin, author of
Love, War, and Other Considerations