... a marvelous collection that conveys deep insights and exquisite details about life in the Midwest ... [Smith] also turns his gaze toward wars the United States is waging abroad and toward foreign nations and cultures. What links his subjects, as the title suggests, is the fact that seemingly invisible actions taken by Americans have lasting consequences in places we typically choose to view only from a distance.
Smith does not often (or not for an entire poem’s length) adopt pre-modern meters or forms, but his careful sonic patterns suggest an immersion in them ... Weldon Kees, Donald Justice and, behind them, Robert Frost constitute the tradition in which Smith works, and in his hands it is political, even topical, not so much in the few poems that address headlines ('Drone') as everywhere else, in allegories, character sketches, vignettes...
This masterwork is pure body heat about the humane and the inhumane — how we treat each other — in anecdote, narrative, personal, and historical poems. A spectrum of stories is rooted in the Midwest with indelible characters and memorable events. Smith can sound like your next-door neighbor even while lacing cruelty and sweetness neatly together. He’s captured the heart of rural America and navigated its conscience brilliantly.
Elegantly delivered though these portraits may be, they aren’t just pretty pastorals ... mith capably sees deeper meaning or darker substance where rural steadiness might lull, but he’s never self-consciously showy ... Charming work for many readers.
