Smoke

By Dorianne Laux

Book Overview

Dorianne Laux's long-awaited third book of poetry follows her collection, What We Carry, a finalist for the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. In Smoke, Laux revisits familiar themes of family, working class lives and the pleasures of the body in poetry that is vital and artfully crafted--poetry that "gets hard in the face of aloofness," in the words of one reviewer. In Smoke, as in her previous work, Laux weaves the warp and woof of ordinary lives into extraordinary and complex tapestries. In "The Shipfitter's Wife," a woman recalls her husband's homecoming at the end of his work day:

Then I'd open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me--the ship's
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the foreman clanging
off the hull's silver ribs. Spark of lead
kissing metal. The clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torch, the whistle,
and the long drive home.
And in the title poem, Laux muses on her own guilty pleasures:
Who would want to give it up, the coal
a cat's eye in the dark room, no one there
but you and your smoke, the window
cracked to street sounds, the distant cries
of living things. Alone, you are almost
safe . . .

With her keen ear and attentive eye, Dorianne Laux offers us a universe with which we are familiar, but gives it to us fresh.

Dorianne Laux is the author of two previous collections of poetry from BOA Editions, Ltd., and is co-author, with Kim Addonizio, of The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Joys of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton, 1997), chosen as an alternate selection by several bookclubs. Laux was the judge for the 2012 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Contest, and is a tenured professor in the creative writing program at the University of Oregon. Laux lives in Eugene, Oregon.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1880238861
• ISBN13: 9781880238868
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: BOA Editions
• Length: 65 Pages
• Weight: 0.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Beautiful work. . .

If you love poetry filled with beautiful images, great concrete detail and deeper than just the words on the page, you'll love Dorianne Laux's Smoke. It is accessible poetry,wonderfully crafted and spiritual.

Excellent.

Dorianne Laux, Smoke (BOA Editions, 2000) My last encounter with Dorianne Laux was almost twenty years ago, in an anthology called Three West Coast Women (Five Fingers Press, 1987). I picked it up in college, and decided after reading it that I wanted to check out more work by Dorianne Laux. Why it took me close to two decades I've no idea, but I finally have. Smoke is a very, very good book. Laux is one of those poets who uses understatement, and uses it well, preferring to let the poem do the talking: "When I arrive at the tollgate I have to make myself stop thinking as I dig in my pockets for the last of my coins, turn to the attendant, indifferent in his blue smock, his white hair curling like smoke around his weathered neck, and say, Thank you, like an idiot, and drive into the blinding midday light." (--"Abschied Symphony") This is definitely one to check out. ****

raw emotion

Dorianne Laux is a wonderful poet. I associate her with Kim Addonzio because of there manual on poetry the wrote together, The Poet's Companion, because they are friends, and because their work has a similar feel (though Laux doesn't write in meter and rhyme like Kim does sometimes). There is this raw emotion, but not just flopped on the page like so much bad poetry. In reading this collection, you see what a craftsman Laux is. Her poems feel raw, they feel spontaneous, but they are finely tuned pieces of art. The book is divided into two sections, Smoke and Fire. The first section, Smoke, is the stronger section, with poems like "Ray at 14", "Prayer" "How It Will Happen, When" and others. The poems here feel like smoke when you read them. They touch you lightly, but powerfully, bringing forth all these images, sounds, smells, feelings. Like smoke, they sneak up on you, and then hurt you. "What could be more sacred than her eyes,fierce and complicated as the truth. Your liferising behind them. Your name on her lips." --Prayer"Death comes to me again, a girl in a cotton slip" --Death comes to me again, a girlThe second section doesn't differ much. The poems don't come raging at you like fire. No burning here. They are much more like smoke, but it does contain some great work, and has "The Shipfitter's Wife," a beautiful poem that was selected for the Best American Poetry 1999 by Robert Bly. I'm just surprised more of her work hasn't appeared there.

awake, with feeling

i was drawn to this book mainly because i have read laux's work before in anthologies. i loved the poems in this book because she writes poignantly about the everyday things in life and she takes on taboo subjects like sex and death and domestic violence and give them dignity. i am definately going to check out other works by her