Lucky Seven

Jordan Smith

Jordan Smith's second book of poems is a fine one. On the ashcan-to- academic scale once proposed (with tongue only half in cheek) by an editorial wag at a small-press magazine, Smith falls solidly within the realm of academia, yet his poems contain one quality that is markedly absent from the majority of academic poets: accessibility. Perhaps more than any poet since T. S. Eliot, Jordan Smith combines the elevation of language that marks poetry with both the erudition that distinguishes the "academic" poet and the plain speaking that makes the subjects upon which he writes understandable to the guy on the street. This isn't poetry that requires, or even begs, deep study to get at the meanings therein. There are, of course, many layers beneath for those who want to find them. But it's possible to enjoy the work of Jordan Smith simply because it is.

Note that this technique is tried by many an aspiring poet, and in most cases it results in spectacularly bad failures. (Ah, the world wide web. Stop by a few poetry sites at random, or better yet personal web pages where the aspiring unpublished have posted the best of their high-school angst. It shouldn't take you long to see what I'm getting at.) Somehow, somewhere along the way, it seems most poets are either captured by the University system and molded into the basic academic or captured by the University system and rebel (i.e., molded into the basic ashcan). Somehow, Smith managed to tread the whole line without being molded either way, and he fooled so many people into thinking he had been that he landed a book at one of the premier academic presses. Good for you, Jordan Smith, and may you be the beginning of a renaissance of erudite poetry that the average Joe can understand.