What do you think?
Rate this book
Blue on Blue Ground
Blue on Blue Ground is about the body, desire, anxiety, and obsession—how what we want redeems and isolates us (and is sometimes used against us). These poems are artful yet accessible, lyrical yet direct, strange but recognizable.
Smith’s relentless self-examination, fear, sense of humor, and vulnerability are all laid to bare in crisp, precise language. From lonely observations, bizarre medical fascinations, emotion, loss, and honesty, Blue on Blue Ground constructs its internal and external worlds.
The metaphorical city is also a “body,” a place of exile and restoration, a symbol of hope, a catalyst for connection. The urban landscape is often the background for the moment or is the moment itself—the world looked at and sorted into words.
Though at times dark, there’s love to be found. Perhaps it’s what drives this collection, colors its observations, and leads it to finally announce: “Someone is putting the world back together.” Blue on Blue Ground wants to look at absolutely everything and believes that complete exploration of the physical and mental selves—fears and desires—is the key to moving and being completely alive in the material world.
Smith’s relentless self-examination, fear, sense of humor, and vulnerability are all laid to bare in crisp, precise language. From lonely observations, bizarre medical fascinations, emotion, loss, and honesty, Blue on Blue Ground constructs its internal and external worlds.
The metaphorical city is also a “body,” a place of exile and restoration, a symbol of hope, a catalyst for connection. The urban landscape is often the background for the moment or is the moment itself—the world looked at and sorted into words.
Though at times dark, there’s love to be found. Perhaps it’s what drives this collection, colors its observations, and leads it to finally announce: “Someone is putting the world back together.” Blue on Blue Ground wants to look at absolutely everything and believes that complete exploration of the physical and mental selves—fears and desires—is the key to moving and being completely alive in the material world.
91 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
1 person is currently reading
83 people want to read
About the author
Aaron Smith
6 books18 followersAaron 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 16, 2010
I think Anne Sexton and Frank O’Hara had a child and his name is Aaron Smith, and his Blue on Blue Ground is perhaps the bravest collection of poems since Sharon Olds gave us sacraments such as Satan Says and The Gold Cell. Aaron Smith’s courage is on par with that of revolutionary writers like Sexton, O’Hara, Langston Hughes, and Gwendolyn Brooks. His first full-length collection is unapologetically confessional, and both defiantly confrontational and defiantly vulnerable. His emotional honesty and authenticity are disarming and refreshing, especially in today’s poetic culture of guarded wit, artful dodging, and pretense, where emotional searching and self reference are often deemed pathetic and passe. He reminds us of some of the highest callings of poetry, and of the power of art to do what no other noble pursuit can do nearly as well. This book succeeds in the highest aims of art: like science that adheres to its principles, it seeks the truth, without regard to what one might like the truth to be; like the best of law and politics it compels us toward the “better angels of our nature;” like uncorrupted journalism it tells what isn’t being told, despite efforts of powers-that-be to keep it hidden, despite our own wishes to look away; like responsible education it challenges us to question, reconsider, and grow; like medicine not adulterated by motives of profit, its purpose is healing, even if that means doing some painful vivisection first.
Chosen by Denise Duhamel for the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, this book contains gems such as “The Signs of Choking” (to be a bruise spit out/ from the mouth of last night’s/ undressed stranger), “Story” (How quickly I am made strange), the “Dr. Engels” poems (swollen and exaggerated/ like the heads of the baby mice/ squashed in the garage), and “Then,” from which the following is an excerpt:
“Of course, there was a tragedy, the way
the beautiful are given back
to the stories that made them, quick
and perfect like a flash of his hair in the wind. And it’s stupid,
predictable - the car, the drunk star athlete
dead, leaving
his exhausted mother
to wander the house at night
calling his name”
Far greater than the sum of its considerably impressive parts, however, is its power as a collection. It is not only startlingly honest, it also reminds us of two buried anthropological artifacts: that meaningful honesty is not a rigid and easily drawn code concerned with the arrangement of clean facts, and that the liberations such honesty brings, although ultimately dazzling and wonderful, are sometimes as heavy as its burdens.
The first two poems of Smith’s I ever read, long before I read his book, left me thinking I would not like his work much. I’m usually drawn to more lyric intensity: a lot of simile, lines dense with bold and inventive imagery, where associations are drawn between the concrete that would otherwise seem unimaginable. Larissa Szporluk’s work comes to mind. That’s not to say my tastes don’t range far from that example, but for reasons that also include factors I haven’t yet identified, I just wasn’t enthusiastic about my first sampling of Smith’s work. The moral of this story is never rule out a poet after one reading, especially when that reading includes only a few poems. I’m more excited about this collection than I have been about anything I’ve read in maybe as long as two or three years, and I’m someone who is thrilled almost daily by something I read.
Blue on Blue Ground makes me want to buy Aaron Smith dinner and spend all night talking with him; it makes me want to be “made strange” to myself; it makes me want to find the bullies of his schooldays and give them bloody noses; it makes me want to get my “hairbrush microphone” and dance around and sing to Blondie and The Bangles; it makes me want to trade my frequent acts of cowardice for treks into my personal wildernesses. This book makes me want to be a better writer. This book, and I say this without the embarrassment it challenges us to defy, makes me want to be a better person. Fulfilling one of art’s most important functions, this book makes me want.
Chosen by Denise Duhamel for the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, this book contains gems such as “The Signs of Choking” (to be a bruise spit out/ from the mouth of last night’s/ undressed stranger), “Story” (How quickly I am made strange), the “Dr. Engels” poems (swollen and exaggerated/ like the heads of the baby mice/ squashed in the garage), and “Then,” from which the following is an excerpt:
“Of course, there was a tragedy, the way
the beautiful are given back
to the stories that made them, quick
and perfect like a flash of his hair in the wind. And it’s stupid,
predictable - the car, the drunk star athlete
dead, leaving
his exhausted mother
to wander the house at night
calling his name”
Far greater than the sum of its considerably impressive parts, however, is its power as a collection. It is not only startlingly honest, it also reminds us of two buried anthropological artifacts: that meaningful honesty is not a rigid and easily drawn code concerned with the arrangement of clean facts, and that the liberations such honesty brings, although ultimately dazzling and wonderful, are sometimes as heavy as its burdens.
The first two poems of Smith’s I ever read, long before I read his book, left me thinking I would not like his work much. I’m usually drawn to more lyric intensity: a lot of simile, lines dense with bold and inventive imagery, where associations are drawn between the concrete that would otherwise seem unimaginable. Larissa Szporluk’s work comes to mind. That’s not to say my tastes don’t range far from that example, but for reasons that also include factors I haven’t yet identified, I just wasn’t enthusiastic about my first sampling of Smith’s work. The moral of this story is never rule out a poet after one reading, especially when that reading includes only a few poems. I’m more excited about this collection than I have been about anything I’ve read in maybe as long as two or three years, and I’m someone who is thrilled almost daily by something I read.
Blue on Blue Ground makes me want to buy Aaron Smith dinner and spend all night talking with him; it makes me want to be “made strange” to myself; it makes me want to find the bullies of his schooldays and give them bloody noses; it makes me want to get my “hairbrush microphone” and dance around and sing to Blondie and The Bangles; it makes me want to trade my frequent acts of cowardice for treks into my personal wildernesses. This book makes me want to be a better writer. This book, and I say this without the embarrassment it challenges us to defy, makes me want to be a better person. Fulfilling one of art’s most important functions, this book makes me want.
October 21, 2015
Really amazing. Reminds me of a grittier Mark Doty: they have the same way of merging and elevating several commonplace occurrences into a single epiphanic moment. Intellectually stimulating, emotionally riveting, aurally titillating... some great poetry.
(I read his second book, APPETITE, when it came out awhile ago and don't remember being impressed. I'm going to have to revisit it soon.)
A lot of the poems take place in Pittsburgh, which is where I'm from, and it's crazy hearing him talk about bars like the Eagle and Pegasus, both of which I used to frequent in their heyday. And he called a vacuum cleaner a sweeper!
<3 <3 <3
(I read his second book, APPETITE, when it came out awhile ago and don't remember being impressed. I'm going to have to revisit it soon.)
A lot of the poems take place in Pittsburgh, which is where I'm from, and it's crazy hearing him talk about bars like the Eagle and Pegasus, both of which I used to frequent in their heyday. And he called a vacuum cleaner a sweeper!
<3 <3 <3
April 22, 2008
I love Aaron Smith. His poems remind me of David Trinidad mixed with some Frank O'Hara mixed with some Denise Duhamel, who chose this book for the Agnes Lynch Prize. Here are some titles from "Blue on Blue Ground"; "Cher Uncensored", "Dear Matt Damon", "Brad Pitt". So there are quite a few poems talking about pop-culture, but there are many other types of poems too. All of them good! Check it out!
January 18, 2016
Brilliantly effusive poetry that burns, singes and tingles. Smith's collection is so relatable, so accessible, that I forgot I'd read the entire book in one sitting. Amazing work from a stellar poet.
February 25, 2012
Funny, sad, lyrical, whimsical, Aaron Smith's collection of poems cut straight to that part of the heart that makes one see the world through someone else's eyes. Always a wondrous effect.
March 6, 2016
Amazing.
April 4, 2024
Walking to lunch I am Cher in Moonstruck, freshly fucked, kicking a can down the street in last night's sultry, strapless gown the color of pennies, my thick black hair still stunning, lips swollen from kisses, coat dark as the heart-shaped hickey on my neck. I think of Nicolas Cage and falling for his speech after our secret date when those damn snowflakes fell on cue like they do in movies, his annoying lecture on their imperfection, like the imperfection of love, and the bullshit of fairy tales, how nothing turns out as we plan, and taking his wooden hand I follow him up the stairs to his surprisingly well-decorated apartment out of the cold and out of my panties into his bed where we do it for hours like rock stars, the naked moon exposing itself like a pervert. I clutch his unusually hairy body to mine, and our oily screams drench the room in a disjointed operatic soundtrack: Oh Nicolas! Oh Cher!
Oh Nicolas! Oh Cher! Cher! Cher! Cher!
Oh Nicolas! Oh Cher! Cher! Cher! Cher!
February 14, 2009
Good, though it suffers somewhat from self-referenciality.
November 13, 2013
This is...
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews