Room Tone

<p>The dailyness in a <strong>Vanessa Smit</strong>h poem is never dull and never what's expected. Her west-coast swagger is reminiscent of early Joni Mitchell - my face like an interview / tells the most important / stories first. Her uploaded anguish is that of a speaker who wipes daily dabs of lipstick on the car carpet saturating the space making a hole in its place. She sees that a rolling wave held something back in response to the sand... and finds a tragedy there. The daughter of a portrait painter this painter/poet's first collection is clear-eyed and insightful poetry that points to her inheritance a vigilant and insistent gauging: We wait we dry out into plaster and become the wall / The dry and cold of a California I never mastered is coming back in plumes.</p><p><strong>-Elaine Sexton</strong> poet and critic author of <em>Drive</em> and <em>Prospect/Refuge</em></p><p class=ql-align-justify> </p><p>This is so moving and delicate - the journey from caring for infants to looking after the elderly and their needs and all the tenderness and sense of employment (and possibly enjoyment) both require. The rhythms of marriage and divorce work so well on the page. Smith is so right in what she says about January - the way it is always twice as long as any other month. I like the sense of the world in which every tiny thing counts for something and the cost of that on the heart and soul and the corresponding yield...</p><p><strong>-Susie Boyt</strong> author of<em> Loved and Missed</em> and <em>My Judy Garland Life</em></p><p class=ql-align-justify> </p><p><em>Room Tone</em> is wildly evanescent - traversing expanses of time and space then spiraling into the palm of Smith's hand. ... [Her] poems are illuminated by a ferocious sense of beauty and tragedy converging in sublime insight.</p><p><strong>-Broughton Coburn</strong> author of <em>The Vast Unknown</em> and <em>Aama in America</em></p><p class=ql-align-justify> </p><p>In <em>Room Tone</em> silence is rendered palpable through<strong> Vanessa Smith</strong>'s hauntingly described scenes of life love and loss. Whether it's observation or imagination there's a meditative nature to her writing that will transport you to a state of personal reflection. This collection is a call to open your heart to the mysteries that surround us.</p><p><strong>-Sara Arnell</strong> author of <em>There Will Be Lobster: Memoir of A Midlife Crisis</em></p>