Before and After: Poems

As both poet and novelist, Charlie Smith has been hailed as "prodigiously talented" by the New York Times , and Madison Smartt Bell describes him as "a spectacular stylist" and "a visionary." Before and After , his fourth volume, is his most powerful collection to date―with poems so short and direct they hit home like a knife to the heart.In Before and After , Smith effectively captures the intimate life of one family―in all its courage, deceit, misery, madness, love, revelation, and rage―and transforms it to record the life of the American family.