Publishing on April 3, 2018 from Jack White's Third Man Books, Destruction of Man is a book-length poem about small scale family farming in the midst of the get-big-or-get-out mantra and foghorn.
Destruction of Man is a book by a poet-farmer, whose farm is located in Ladysmith, WI, about farming, and family, and stung body, stung land. The conclusions Smith presents are clarion clear: rurality has its music and all we have is love. Following the words of Gertrude Stein: "After all anybody is as their land and air is."
With praise from Tyehimba Jess, Ada Limón, Patterson Hood, and Juliana Spahr (full below) Destruction of Man is already making it's mark
PRAISE FOR DESTRUCTION OF MAN
"Abraham Smith's Destruction of Man is a compass setting toward music caught between the hungry teeth of vole and buried bone of river."
—Tyehimba Jess, Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
"Part song, part guttural wail into the American rural landscape, Destruction of Man is a breathtaking lyric that's as complex and heartbreaking as the country itself."
—Ada Limón, finalist 2015 National Book Award-Poetry
"Abraham Smith uses his words like a rhythmic sledgehammer upside the head."
—Patterson Hood, co-founder and frontman of the Drive-By Truckers
"I’ve been unable to decide if the best way to describe this book is as punk gone agrarian or if the agrarians went punk."
—Juliana Spahr, Winner of the 2009 O.B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize
