Windy Day at Kabekona

"Over the years Thomas R. Smith, along with Robert Bly and Louis Jenkins, has become one the masters of the Midwestern prose poem. It (1)s a meditative poem: simple, plain-spoken yet so much more, because underlying this simplicity is a quest for the spiritual truths that inform human experience. Smith's 'acts of attention' his paying service to objects, nature, and human interactions veer effortlessly into the metaphorical where even a chance encounter with a raccoon can morph into a contemplation on our symbiotic relationship with the natural world. In his preface to this collection, Smith reminds us of Robert Bly's contention that by its very nature the prose poem 'helps to heal the wounds of abstraction.' If anyone doubts Bly's words, I respectfully, and happily, direct them to Smith's Windy Day at Kabekona." -Peter Johnson "Thomas Smith is the child of the sleepy small towns in Wisconsin and of the wide-awake, reckless, let's-go-on-to-the-end spirit of the Sixties. He knew he was destined to be a poet early on. He tells stories well, and can set a scene like a Medieval painter. In 'Your Inner Face' he says, "It's this face you'd prefer to be known by. When two people glimpse it in each other, we call that love and if someone should see all the secret faces at once, heaven." -Robert Bly "These are poems of pure insight and beauty. Once I started reading them, I couldn't stop. Like Robert Bly, Louis Jenkins, and William Stafford before him, Thomas Smith's poems reflect upon the natural beauty of the Midwest, the inner life of the mystic, and our current geopolitical situation. Accessible and profound, Smith is a poet to be savored-to be read, not once but again and again." -Nin Andrews