I Live in a Hut

by S.E. Smith

Poetry. Winner of the 2011 Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Prize, selected by Matthea Harvey. The poems in S. E. Smith's debut collection are caffeinated, wildly comic, assured maximalist performances introducing such characters as three slutty bears, a horse thief named Dirk, Becky Home-ecky, and a pony of darkness. Divided into sections appropriately titled "Parties," "Beauty," and "Devastation," Smith's book is at once free-spirited, metaphysically inquisitive, and romantically exuberant: "If god wanted us to be strangers, why would he place us / next to each other in the movie theater and make us think / our knees are touching when they're really a few inches / apart? Looking at Anita Ekberg's breasts, we can see / the future. It is soft, pink, and frolics in a fountain / where the sea gods bathe their weary feet."

Genres: Poetry

68 pages, Paperback

First published March 6, 2012

About the author

S.E. SMITH holds degrees from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin and Carnegie Mellon University. She is the founding editor of OH NO magazine and her poems have appeared in Fence, jubilat, Best New Poets, and Black Warrior Review, among others.

Reviews

[Misti Rainwater-Lites · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now here is a book of poetry I will return to again and again. I won't sell this one at eBay. These poems are bursting with fruit flavor and when I say fruit flavor I don't mean the artificial kind you find in Fruit Stripes gum or Skittles. I tasted the rainbow and it was real. It was a ripe and juicy Fredericksburg peach, a fuzzy sunset in the palm of my sticky hand. This book is my kind of disco, my kind of beach blanket bingo, my kind of road trip to Jupiter on a hot ass Saturday night. Will now buy every book written by S. Smith especially the ones written five years from now.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love how "Beauty" is its own section. It fills it perfectly. Much of rest squirms so quickly, I am often wide-eyed and simply listening hard, and not feeling I know what just happened. And so much happens, which is a kind of wonderful. I love how I am included in the gossip of it all. I am grateful for the poems that look me straight in the face ("Enormous Sleeping Women" and "Chapel of Teeth") and I feel them all over.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was reading old interviews by Rebecca Wadlinger and she shouted out this collection. Winner of the 2011 Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Prize, selected by Matthea Harvey, this is a lively and animated debut offering. Divided into three sections ("Parties," "Beauty," and "Devastation”), it’s energized, nonchalant, and over the top. “Too Bad” might be my favorite final poem to any collection, ever.

[Biscuits · Rating 4 out of 5]

Total pleasure among the agony, disjunction, and oddities.