Primer

by Aaron Smith

In his third poetry collection, Primer, Aaron Smith grapples with the ugly realities of the private self, in which desire feels more like a trap than fulfillment. What is the face we prepare in our public lives to distract others from our private grief?

Smith's poetry explores that inexplicable tension between what we say and how we actually feel, exposing the complications of intimacy and the limitations of language to bridge those distances between friends, family members, and lovers. What we deny, in the end, may be just what we actually survive.

Mortality in Smith's work remains the uncomfortable foundation at the center of our relationship with others, to faith, to art, to love as we grow older, and ultimately, to our own sense of who we are in our bodies in the world.

The struggle of this book, finally, is in naming whether just what we say we want is enough to satisfy our primal needs, or are the choices we make to stay alive the same choices we make to help us, in so many small ways, to die.

Genres: Poetry, Gay, LGBT

104 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2016

About the author

Aaron Smith is the author of five books of poetry published by the Pitt Poetry Series. His collections include Blue on Blue Ground (2005), winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize; Appetite (2012), an NPR Great Read and finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize; Primer (2016), a Poetry Must Read for the Massachusetts Center for the Book; The Book of Daniel (2019); and Stop Lying (2023). His chapbooks include Men in Groups and What’s Required, winner of the Frank O’Hara Award. A three-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, he is the recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Mass Cultural Council, and his work has appeared in such publications as Court Green, Ploughshares, and The Best American Poetry 2013. He has taught at West Virginia Wesleyan and is currently Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brave, startling, brutally honest in-your-face poems from a poet who never fails to compel me. There's nothing subtle here. Only an unrelenting insight in what it means to be a gay man, to be a son, and battle the rigors of depression. One of the best of 2016.

[Noura · Rating 4 out of 5]

// Trigger warnings in this book: homophobia, suicide, depression, self-harm //

I picked this up and didn't stop reading even when it got heavy. I wanted to know more, to understand better regardless of how some poems were almost painful to read.

More than ever I am convinced that everyone who reads and enjoys poetry that's painful is a fucking masochist.

[diana · Rating 1 out of 5]

My father wants to take me outside
and beat me for my smart-ass mouth.
he says: you're just like my father.
i say: i'd kill myself to get away from you, too.
we both draw lines and cross them.
we both are afraid of our rage.
(RUINED)

i read this part of the poem on pinterest years ago and i expected the rest of this collection to hit the same. it didn't.

[Leigh Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fucking depressing poetry about fucking and depression.

Not a complaint. In fact, Smith's third volume is basically all about showing the dark parts of yourself to someone and hoping they don't run away screaming. People with their own dark places -- and who doesn't have those? -- will most likely find these poems comforting, if only because the speaker truly understands how awful things can get in the throes of mental illness. The best of the poems on this theme, "Blue Exits," could probably save your life.

When Smith isn't being candid about his mental struggles, he's being quite blunt about sex, in two different ways. First, in how much he enjoys it, and secondly, in how long it took him to come to an understanding and acceptance of himself as a gay man. This territory has been covered before by other poets, but it's the mixture of shame and desire, strong in boyhood but leaving traces even in adulthood, that makes them so compelling to read. You get the sense, as a reader, that Smith has pretty much opened his closet of neuroses for you and said, "This is me. Take it or leave it." And he's quite good at what he does, so I definitely suggest that you take it. Recommended for poetry collections that serve queer-positive communities.

[Ron Mohring · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much too-familiar territory: too familiar to me personally, and so much of it, and so reading the book feels like a long train ride with an estranged brother to whom I never speak but utterly love, for whom I wish simple happiness, and he speaks to me in these blunt recollections and confessions as the miles rock under us, carrying us to nowhere in particular--it's the sitting together and listening that matters--and when he gets to the middle my heart is just breaking but I let him go on and he becomes even more eloquent in his desire and fear and shame and hope.

[ifonly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't really read poetry before this, so this was an unusual read for me. That being said, I really enjoyed the use of language and symbolism Smith uses in this book to talk about certain pieces of his life. He does a tremendous job of imparting emotion, especially in the section of poems in tribute to Irene McKinney. This section of poetry left quite an impact on me; poetry about death has been done numerous times, but, as with all the poetry in this book, Smith's language is unique and effecting. I think I'm a fan of poetry now. :)

[Jessica Ranard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second book I've read by Aaron Smith - he writes poems that are exact, erotic, full of cock, daddy issues, suicide and pills. There is no beating around the bush (yes, in that way, there is beating around the bush), but this book of poetry reads how a thought leaves your head - and captures it astutely.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reflective, heartbreaking, lust-soaked poems that are all hyper sobering. Whether it's about family or lovers or friends gone, each poem is a bit tough to read. It's not my style of poetry, but Smith is one hell of a poet. I'll without a doubt be reading more of his work.

[Ace Boggess · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is filled with the type of poetry I love, filled with a sense of connection to the strange, in which poet and narrator are so blurred as to be indistinguishable. These poems are straightforward, honest, and full of life (even when written about death). A wonderful collection.

[willowdog · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes we want to see ourselves in works. In Primer, I see much of myself. The worry, the upsets, the what was I thinking of growing up.

[jiya · Rating 4 out of 5]

his slay

[wes. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[TA Inskeep · Rating 5 out of 5]

Searing, brutal, fucking beautiful.

[Alex Witt · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this breathtaking collection of poetry, Smith tackles a variety of topics such as depression, sex, suicide, death, and family. Each beautifully crafted poem is told through the voice of a gay man but that doesn't keep it from touching the heart of every human who's eyes fall upon this visceral text.

[jamie kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

divine.

[Inverted · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love smut in poetry because it is difficult to pull off — the line between baring and disclosing a tricky one to cross — but Aaron Smith is unusual in this regard. See Liquid, Poem for Straight Guys, Still Life With Train for more info.

But beyond making my heads throb, Aaron Smith succeeds in (recalling Spicer) making poems out of real objects and in bringing them across language and across time. He wrestles with these often painful things and turns poetry into a contact sport. He assumes the position, lunges, gets entangled, and viola, there's another poem. For instance, from This Unknown Buried in the Known, a series of smaller poems for Irene McKinney:

Sometimes when it's late,
I stand on the deck and talk

to the sky: If there is grace, it must be
this big. We all try to hold that bigness

in our chests, and, failing, live under
beauty we barely understand,

at least not in life. I thought if anyone
would come back and tell me

what happens, it would be you,
so I know now there must be nothing

or something we can't come
back from, and that makes me more

grateful and sad, more able to die, more
never wanting to die.

It is this constant negotation, this sweaty and messy and vigorous wrangling, that makes Primer true to its title, true to form. A highlight of this Goodreads year.