Be Recorder: Poems - Paperback

by Carmen Giménez (Author)

Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry - Finalist for the PEN Open Book Award - Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Carmen Gim nez Smith dares to demand renewal for a world made unrecognizable

Be Recorder offers readers a blazing way forward into an as yet unmade world. The many times and tongues in these poems investigate the precariousness of personhood in lines that excoriate and sanctify. Carmen Gim nez Smith turns the increasingly pressing urge to cry out into a dream of rebellion--against compromise, against inertia, against self-delusion, and against the ways the media dream up our complacency in an America that depends on it. This reckoning with self and nation demonstrates that who and where we are is as conditional as the fact of our compliance: "Miss America from sea to shining sea / the huddled masses have a question / there is one of you and all of us." Be Recorder is unrepentant and unstoppable, and affirms Gim nez Smith as one of the most vital and vivacious poets of our time.

Author Biography

Carmen Giménez Smith is the author of six books, including Milk and Filth, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry, and Bring Down the Little Birds, winner of the American Book Award. She teaches at Virginia Tech University.