Description
Some say Abraham Smith's live readings are the best in America, except it's more accurate to say he howls rather than reads. So, better to call his readings hollerings, which often times might take place next to a tree. Listen to his howl via the flexi-disc included in DESTRUCTION OF MAN. You will hear the postmodern pastoral incantatory prophesy told through colloquialism and a minding of song. Music has a scent and the song logic as this book meanders along that broken and disjointed road. Regional writing is a curse, it seems; but this book is unabashedly regional, in the sense that Smith sought to translate the stories of his native county--and thereby the fading gleam or echo of a dying agrarian lifeway. This is a book-length poem about small scale family farming in the midst of the get-big-or-get-out mantra and foghorn. More broadly, this is a book-length poem about culture history and masculinity and our rupturing and sometimes obliterating elisions with machines. The conclusions are clarion clear: rurality has its hectic musics and all we have is love. Gertrude Stein said the seed of DESTRUCTION OF MAN: "After all anybody is as their land and air is."
* Smith will be touring with Third Man related artists such as Margo Price, Lillie Mae and more. * Smith has always toured on his own and will continue to do so. He will be appearing AWP 2018, Mission Creek Festival, SXSW, Willie Nelson's Luck ranch (tentative), plus dates in Chicago, NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco (City Lights), Detroit, Nashville, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Atlanta, Georgia, Oxford, Mississippi, and more. We have commitments for blurbs from Drive by Truckers lead singer Patterson Hood and poets Tyehimba Jess (Pulitzer Prize) and Juliana Spahr (Hardison Poetry Prize). * We are interested in co-op *We are also very interested in p&p (ie dumps) displays etc. * Reviews and Publicity: We will be hiring an outside publicist to complement our own in house publicity. Galleys will be mailed to 200 reviewers and also available for request. Periodicals and webpages who will be receiving copies are The Believer, The New York Times, Coldfront, The New Yorker, Rumpus, Boston Review, Vice, Los Angeles Times, Rain Taxi, Bookslut, Paris Review. Media: A trailer for the book itself plus multiple videos for select poems will be produced. We have also professionally filmed Abraham Smith reading the book in its entirety. The film is a three hour tour d force of poetry, images, and flying sweat. We will be releasing parts of the film leading to the release of the book, and then the film in its entirety. Professional videos for both a single poem from the collection and a trailer for the general book will be made. * Different celebrities from the TMR family will be contacted to participate ifor blurbs .We will be approaching celebrities such as: Patterson Hood and Margo Price. Social Media: TMB and TMR use all social media platforms regularly to post reviews, excerpts and profiles related to TMB authors. We also have sent exclusive audio downloads of select authors to our Vault subscription service. This download is always accompanied by blurbs, photos, links to relevant sites, and author bio. *Third Man Books Twitter 2,358 Followers *Third Man Records Twitter 118k Followers *Third Man Records FB 135,830 Likes *Third Man Records.com receives an average 3500 visits per day *Third Man Records Instagram has 64k Followers *Third Man Books.com is housed within ThirdManRecords.com
About the Author
Abraham Smith is the author of four poetry collections: Ashagalomancy (Action Books, 2015); Only Jesus Could Icefish in Summer (Action Books, 2014); Hank (Action Books, 2010); and Whim Man Mammon (Action Books, 2007). In 2015, he released Hick Poetics (Lost Roads Press), a co-edited anthology of contemporary rural American poetry and related essays. His creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA, and the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Destruction of Man, his book-length poem about farming, is forthcoming in Spring 2018 from Third Man Books. This fall, Smith joins the Weber State University community as an Assistant Professor of English.
Reviews
"I've been unable to decide if the best way to describe this book is as punk gone agrarian or if the agrarians went punk and got some politics or if Gertrude Stein went eco or if thrash metal went intellectual or if Whitman rapped with Busta Rhymes and they both agreed to rap about a lot of small animals because that is suddenly where it's at. But whatever it is, Destruction of Man is like all of Abraham Smith's work something full of many many words and weirdness and tradition and it might also be prophecy." - Juliana Spahr, author of The Winter the Wolf Came Abraham Smith uses his words like a rhythmic sledgehammer upside the head. Brilliant stuff that merges poetry and performance art. - Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers Part song, part guttural wail into the American rural landscape, Destruction of Man is a breathtaking lyric that's as complex and heartbreaking as the country itself. Smith has long been a lauded preacher of the trees, praiser of the woods, but this is his finest work yet as he makes a new form to sing of both the beauty and the mess. - Ada Limon, author of Bright Dead Things Abraham Smith's Destruction of Man is a compass setting toward musics caught between the hungry teeth of vole and buried bone of river. It nestles a bloodline of tonked and battered rhyme while conjuring a clabbered American Karma into silos of riveted storm. Spackled with image and strung out like a laundry line of ghost furious prayer, this book will carry you wild when you surrender to its eddies and breaks. Dive head in and leave caution to the shore. - Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Olio.
Book Information
ISBN 9780997457810
Author Abraham Smith
Format Paperback
Page Count 95
Imprint Third Man Books
Publisher Third Man Books
* Smith will be touring with Third Man related artists such as Margo Price, Lillie Mae and more. * Smith has always toured on his own and will continue to do so. He will be appearing AWP 2018, Mission Creek Festival, SXSW, Willie Nelson's Luck ranch (tentative), plus dates in Chicago, NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco (City Lights), Detroit, Nashville, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Atlanta, Georgia, Oxford, Mississippi, and more. We have commitments for blurbs from Drive by Truckers lead singer Patterson Hood and poets Tyehimba Jess (Pulitzer Prize) and Juliana Spahr (Hardison Poetry Prize). * We are interested in co-op *We are also very interested in p&p (ie dumps) displays etc. * Reviews and Publicity: We will be hiring an outside publicist to complement our own in house publicity. Galleys will be mailed to 200 reviewers and also available for request. Periodicals and webpages who will be receiving copies are The Believer, The New York Times, Coldfront, The New Yorker, Rumpus, Boston Review, Vice, Los Angeles Times, Rain Taxi, Bookslut, Paris Review. Media: A trailer for the book itself plus multiple videos for select poems will be produced. We have also professionally filmed Abraham Smith reading the book in its entirety. The film is a three hour tour d force of poetry, images, and flying sweat. We will be releasing parts of the film leading to the release of the book, and then the film in its entirety. Professional videos for both a single poem from the collection and a trailer for the general book will be made. * Different celebrities from the TMR family will be contacted to participate ifor blurbs .We will be approaching celebrities such as: Patterson Hood and Margo Price. Social Media: TMB and TMR use all social media platforms regularly to post reviews, excerpts and profiles related to TMB authors. We also have sent exclusive audio downloads of select authors to our Vault subscription service. This download is always accompanied by blurbs, photos, links to relevant sites, and author bio. *Third Man Books Twitter 2,358 Followers *Third Man Records Twitter 118k Followers *Third Man Records FB 135,830 Likes *Third Man Records.com receives an average 3500 visits per day *Third Man Records Instagram has 64k Followers *Third Man Books.com is housed within ThirdManRecords.com
About the Author
Abraham Smith is the author of four poetry collections: Ashagalomancy (Action Books, 2015); Only Jesus Could Icefish in Summer (Action Books, 2014); Hank (Action Books, 2010); and Whim Man Mammon (Action Books, 2007). In 2015, he released Hick Poetics (Lost Roads Press), a co-edited anthology of contemporary rural American poetry and related essays. His creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA, and the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Destruction of Man, his book-length poem about farming, is forthcoming in Spring 2018 from Third Man Books. This fall, Smith joins the Weber State University community as an Assistant Professor of English.
Reviews
"I've been unable to decide if the best way to describe this book is as punk gone agrarian or if the agrarians went punk and got some politics or if Gertrude Stein went eco or if thrash metal went intellectual or if Whitman rapped with Busta Rhymes and they both agreed to rap about a lot of small animals because that is suddenly where it's at. But whatever it is, Destruction of Man is like all of Abraham Smith's work something full of many many words and weirdness and tradition and it might also be prophecy." - Juliana Spahr, author of The Winter the Wolf Came Abraham Smith uses his words like a rhythmic sledgehammer upside the head. Brilliant stuff that merges poetry and performance art. - Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers Part song, part guttural wail into the American rural landscape, Destruction of Man is a breathtaking lyric that's as complex and heartbreaking as the country itself. Smith has long been a lauded preacher of the trees, praiser of the woods, but this is his finest work yet as he makes a new form to sing of both the beauty and the mess. - Ada Limon, author of Bright Dead Things Abraham Smith's Destruction of Man is a compass setting toward musics caught between the hungry teeth of vole and buried bone of river. It nestles a bloodline of tonked and battered rhyme while conjuring a clabbered American Karma into silos of riveted storm. Spackled with image and strung out like a laundry line of ghost furious prayer, this book will carry you wild when you surrender to its eddies and breaks. Dive head in and leave caution to the shore. - Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Olio.
Book Information
ISBN 9780997457810
Author Abraham Smith
Format Paperback
Page Count 95
Imprint Third Man Books
Publisher Third Man Books
