Drawing on nine previous collections and including nearly fifty new poems, Charlie Smith’s I Am Your Lifeguard marks the return of one of our most honest and unorthodox poets. The poems in this collection expose jagged truths: some are love letters; some focus our attention on beauty we may have otherwise missed, stepped over or cast aside; some tell us secrets we may want to carry in a locket; some are x-ray readings of our hearts; some are laugh-out-loud funny; some are quiet revelations. Each one is a prism through which Smith refracts and reflects the experience of consciousness, such as “No Nonsense,” in which he writes that “I came / away from myself / unstuck / and a sort of translucent orderliness / like a small herd of gazelles / entered my mind.” The cascade of imagery, observation, and revelation that characterizes Smith’s work imbues the collection with an expansive, radical compassion. It “remind[s] us . . . we don’t really know what beauty is until we’ve looked hard at the horror that throws beauty into bright relief” (David Kirby, New York Times Book Review). I Am Your Lifeguard is prophetic and prescient, exquisitely descriptive of what it means to be human, and astonishingly attentive to beauty found even in the most derelict places. This collection is a stunning retrospective from an award-winning writer of “scalding aortal brilliance” (New York Times Book Review).
“For pure, raw power of language, nobody in his generation comes close to Charlie Smith” (David Bottoms).
