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Its Ghostly Workshop: Poems
From the Mediterranean to the American West, the poems in Ron Smith's new collection move across time and place to find reliable truths through personal observation. Beyond his own experiences Smith draws from the lives of notable and diverse figures -- Edward Teller, Edgar Allan Poe, Mickey Mantle, Ezra Pound, Robert Penn Warren, Jesse Owens, Leni Riefenstahl, and many others.
Its Ghostly Workshop probes the fallibility of philosophy while strengthening the quest for certainty. Wondering and weighing, these are poems capable of conviction as well as doubt. Like the city of Rome, the subject at the book's center, Its Ghostly Workshop aims to rewire us, to "virus" us, to "rush" us "with visionary blazes, cascades / of memory, incandescent logic."
Its Ghostly Workshop probes the fallibility of philosophy while strengthening the quest for certainty. Wondering and weighing, these are poems capable of conviction as well as doubt. Like the city of Rome, the subject at the book's center, Its Ghostly Workshop aims to rewire us, to "virus" us, to "rush" us "with visionary blazes, cascades / of memory, incandescent logic."
88 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2013
4 people want to read
About the author
Ron Smith
183 books17 followers
Librarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Ron Smith is the author of Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery, runner-up for the National Poetry Series Open Competition and the Samuel French Morse Prize (Margaret Atwood and Donald Hall, judges) and published by University Presses of Florida. His Moon Road: Poems 1986-2005 has just been issued by Louisiana State University Press, and has been praised by Pulitzer-winner Claudia Emerson and Pulitzer-finalist David Wojahn, as well as the Italian scholar and translator Massimo Bacigalupo and the world-famous journalist and novelist Tom Wolfe.
Ron Smith's poems have appeared in many periodicals, including The Nation, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and in a number of anthologies. His essays and reviews can be found in The Georgia Review, San Francisco Review of Books, Kenyon Review, and his poetry column Red Guitar at www.blackbird.vcu.edu.
Smith, a native of Savannah, Georgia, moved to Richmond, Virginia, to play college football. A number of his poems deal with the benefits, costs, values, and spectacle of sports.
Smith holds degrees in English, philosophy, general humanities, and creative writing from University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University. He's also studied writing at Bennington College in Vermont; British drama at Worcester College, Oxford University; and Renaissance and modern culture and literature at the Ezra Pound Center for Literature in Merano, Italy. His awards and honors include the Theodore Roethke Poetry Prize, the Guy Owen Poetry Prize, a Bread Loaf Scholarship in Poetry, and a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship.
At St. Christopher's School, established in 1911, Ron Smith has held the George O. Squires Chair of Distinguished Teaching and is currently Writer-in-Residence, the first person ever to hold that title. In public and private schools, he conducts workshops in poetry for teachers and for students of all ages. At Mary Washington College, Virginia Commonwealth University, and University of Richmond, he has taught courses in creative writing, 20th century American poetry, and the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe.
In 2005, Ron was an inaugural winner of the $10,000 Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry. In 2006 he became a Curator for that prize.
Ron Smith is the author of Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery, runner-up for the National Poetry Series Open Competition and the Samuel French Morse Prize (Margaret Atwood and Donald Hall, judges) and published by University Presses of Florida. His Moon Road: Poems 1986-2005 has just been issued by Louisiana State University Press, and has been praised by Pulitzer-winner Claudia Emerson and Pulitzer-finalist David Wojahn, as well as the Italian scholar and translator Massimo Bacigalupo and the world-famous journalist and novelist Tom Wolfe.
Ron Smith's poems have appeared in many periodicals, including The Nation, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and in a number of anthologies. His essays and reviews can be found in The Georgia Review, San Francisco Review of Books, Kenyon Review, and his poetry column Red Guitar at www.blackbird.vcu.edu.
Smith, a native of Savannah, Georgia, moved to Richmond, Virginia, to play college football. A number of his poems deal with the benefits, costs, values, and spectacle of sports.
Smith holds degrees in English, philosophy, general humanities, and creative writing from University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University. He's also studied writing at Bennington College in Vermont; British drama at Worcester College, Oxford University; and Renaissance and modern culture and literature at the Ezra Pound Center for Literature in Merano, Italy. His awards and honors include the Theodore Roethke Poetry Prize, the Guy Owen Poetry Prize, a Bread Loaf Scholarship in Poetry, and a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship.
At St. Christopher's School, established in 1911, Ron Smith has held the George O. Squires Chair of Distinguished Teaching and is currently Writer-in-Residence, the first person ever to hold that title. In public and private schools, he conducts workshops in poetry for teachers and for students of all ages. At Mary Washington College, Virginia Commonwealth University, and University of Richmond, he has taught courses in creative writing, 20th century American poetry, and the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe.
In 2005, Ron was an inaugural winner of the $10,000 Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry. In 2006 he became a Curator for that prize.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 20, 2024
A collection of poems that focuses on the retelling of famous lives - Edgar Allen Poe, Ezra Pound, John Keats, etc.
from Poe's Last Words: "'God have mercy / on my poor soul,' the recusant said / on Sunday, in homely prose, then finished / his miserable days. His enemies claimed / it was too damned little too damned late. / Like the Richmond papers' condescending praise?"
from The Rewiring: "Clattering zing of the tram, motorino flash / and growl, exhaust and garlic gusts, sweat tang, / urine and bread on the breeze and the sweet grief / of tranished saxophone, accordian's tattered wheez"
from Poe's Last Words: "'God have mercy / on my poor soul,' the recusant said / on Sunday, in homely prose, then finished / his miserable days. His enemies claimed / it was too damned little too damned late. / Like the Richmond papers' condescending praise?"
from The Rewiring: "Clattering zing of the tram, motorino flash / and growl, exhaust and garlic gusts, sweat tang, / urine and bread on the breeze and the sweet grief / of tranished saxophone, accordian's tattered wheez"
Displaying 1 of 1 review