Aaron Smith: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

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Driving North on Interstate 99 the Poet Considers His Life at Forty

 

I’ve pushed all my lovers into winter nights

or fled them in 3 AM taxis, each city empty

as a room I slept in. I understood today

why my mother cries when I leave:

she got nothing she wished for at the driveway’s edge.

I ignored friends, stayed home to type in evening light

that even still makes me suicidal. I haven’t found words

for the gray-smudge sadness under my sternum.

I got everything I wanted and didn’t realize it. I got nothing

I wanted and made excuses. Still I can’t sit in a room

without television noise, or think about the past

without throwing pencils at the ceiling.

I can’t stand to drive in silence.

I can’t stand to drive with the radio on.

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Aaron Smith is the author of five collections of poetry published by the Pitt Poetry Series, most recently Stop Lying (2023). With Maureen Seaton, he co-wrote the forthcoming book Beautiful People (SMU Project Poëtica/Bridwell, 2025). He is associate professor of creative writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.

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                                                                         Paul Richmond, from his War Paint series.                              
                                                

Comments

[Grace Cavalieri]

What a great true poem---cannot be great without being true--everybody's truth.

[Lara]

This is gorgeous; I wish I had written it. Now let's back to throwing pencils at the ceiling...

[Don Berger]

This is a hard-nosed, shockingly good poem, getting right at the heart of the speaker's condition. The language is genuine, rhythmic, forceful all the way through. The one who says these words knows them really well.

[Clarinda]

Thx poet and this sonnet …you make me feel ok about feeling this way. Often it’s a fabulous use of the sonnet form—that most flexible and demanding of forms .

[Sherman Alexie]

Oh, damn, this poem is great.

[David Lehman]

A fat ass poem. Great pic, too.

[Elinor Nauen]

Came here to say exactly what it turns out everyone else has just said.

[lola Haskins]

This is devastatingly honest, and ends perfectly.
Forget ceilings and pencils, Aaron. these are the words you've been looking for.

[David Beaudouin]

Great poem. Those "I's" sound like a sledge pounding an anvil. The poem's uncertainty about being either this or that brings the first lines of the Divine Comedy to mind-- that halfway through life, we can find ourselves lost, yet at once, on the precipice of renewal. Thanks, Aaron & Terence!

[Eileen Reich]

This is a great poem. Aaron Smith sends a truthful, clear message. The artwork is great.

[Terence Winch]

David: thanks for commenting.

[Beth Joselow]

What David Beaudoin said. Great poem.

[ruth lepson]

Yes, it's honest &. true.

[Geoffrey Himes]

Each city empty as a room I slept in: I love metaphors that compare one element in the story to another element.

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Devastating.

[Richard Giannone]

These words in their frantic rhythm have passed through the nervous system.

[Robert Sward]

Somber. Direct. The Hole within--the Hole without. May an endless supply of pencils be ours. Blackwings are the best. Their flight is true, and they stick the best.