Smith is the author of 9 books of poetry and 6 books of fiction as well as two memoirs and two literary biographies of Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He is married to Ann Smith, a professor of nursing, with 3 adult children and 8 grandchildren. He taught at BGSU Firelands College in Ohio for 38 years. His most recent work includes The Thick of Thin: Memoirs of a Working-Class Writer (2017) and Thoreau's Lost Journal: Poems (2018, new enlarged edition).