Larry Smith Homepage
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Poet
- Novelist - Short
Story Writer - Editor
Critic -
Reviewer -
Film Writer - Biographer
Professor
Emeritus of English and Humanties
BGSU Firelands College
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Interests:
American Buddhism, peace making, film, small press publishing and
editing, alternative literature including rebel poets and writers,
d.a.levy, Kenneth Patchen, Cleveland poetry scene, Ohio and the
Midwest, working-class writing. Available for talks and readings and
programs on the above. Lsmithdog@aol.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
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Born in the
industrial Ohio Valley in the 1940's, Smith has worked as a steel mill
laborer, a high school teacher, a college professor, and a
writer.
A
graduate of Mingo Central High School, Muskingum College, and Kent
State University, he is the author of six books of poetry, a book of
memoirs, two books of fiction, two literary biographies, a life
biography, and a book of translations from the Chinese.
He
is the director of the Firelands Writing Center and Editor -in-Chief of
Bottom Dog Press, Inc.
Smith
is also the father of three adult children, and is married to Ann Smith
a professor emerita of Nursing at the Medical College of Ohio.
The
author is a requested speaker on creative writing, the American
Transcendental writers, Zen Buddhist writings, and working-class
literature.
Recently
retired, he may be reached at BGSU Firelands College where he
still teaches writing, literature, and film.
419-433-5560
ext. 20784 or at
Lsmithdog@aol.com
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Larry's Blog
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 (click
icon)
Writer's
Statement
Founder and director
Bottom Dog Press &
Bird Dog Publishing
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BOOKS
Faces and Voices: Tales by Larry Smith. Bird Dog
Publishing 2006.
A River Remains: Poems. WordTech
Publishing 2006.
Milldust & Roses: Memoirs. Ridgeway Press 2005; second edition by Bottom
Dog Press 2005.
Thoreu's
Lost
Journal: Poems by Larry
Smith. Westron Press, 2001.
Kenneth Patchen: Rebel Poet in America. A Consortium of
Small Presses, 2000. Biography.
Chinese Zen Poems: What
Hold Has This Mountain? trans. Bottom Dog Press, 1998.
Working It Out (novel) Ridgeway Press, 1998.
Beyond Rust: Novella and
Stories. Bottom Dog Press,
1995.
Steel Valley: Postcards and Letters (Poems). Pig Iron Press, 1992.
Ohio Zen Poems with d. steven conkle (A Twinbook) Bottom Dog Press, 1989.
Across These States (Journal Poem) Bottom Dog Press, 1985.
Scissors, Paper, Rock (Prose Poems) Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1982.
Echo Without Sound
(Poems with Etchings by Stephen Smigocki) Northwoods Press, 1982.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti:
Poet-at-Large (Literary
biography) Southern Illinois Univeristy
Press, 1983.
Kenneth Patchen
(Literary biography) Twayne Series, G.K.Hall Publishers, 1978
FILMS
[Two
docu-drama video
programs, written, co-directed and co-produced with
Tom Koba; funded
through
Ohio Humanities Council and Ohio Arts Counci.]
James Wright's Ohio (30
minutes, 1986-1987)
Kenneth Patchen: An Art of
Engagement (30 and 45 minutes, 1987-1988)
DVD double program
d.a.levy: Cleveland Rebel Poet of the
Mimeograph Revolution
(Interview with Ed
Sanders/
Memorial Reading at levyfest 2005).
—Editorship—
Book co-editor
for
 Family
Matters: Poems of Our Families with Ann Smith (2005)
America Zen: A Gathering of Poets with
Ray McNiece (2004)
Also:
Working Hard for the Money: America's Working Poor in
Stories, Essays,
Poems and Photos with Mary E. Weems (2002);
Writing Work: Writers on Working-Class Writing
(1999);
Getting
By: Stories of Working Lives (1996);
Coffeehouse Poetry Anthology
(1996);
In Buckeye Country: Photos and Essays (1994);
A Red Shadow of Steel Mills: Photos and Poems
(1990).
Managing Editor of Heartlands: A
Magazine of Midwest Life and Art.
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A River Remains: Poems by
Larry Smith.
A WordTech Series Selection
from Word Communications, Inc. 252
pages
(Poems
read on Writers' Almanac, NPR)
Available
from Bottom Dog Press direct: $18.00
THE BONDS OF WORK
“We’ll get the job done,”
I tell my daughter on the phone
and hear my father’s voice, all his life
turning work to love and honor.
“We’ll get the job done”—not perfection
but carry through, and I recall
the long hours of getting his tools
holding flashlights while he lay
on cardboard beneath the car
fixing brakes and starters, changing oil
because he could, because we
needed milk and bread.
When married, he’d help us move
each time not stopping till the beds
were up in each bedroom—his hands
red from lifting, turning wrenches
on appliances, thinking his way through.
And he’d follow our U-Haul back,
return with me and sandwiches,
my wife making the kids’ beds,
Mom serving coffee in paper cups,
only then could we sit and rest.
I give back now this work
for my children grown and wed,
helping them know their grandfather’s
love by the work he bred.
Faces
and Voices: Tales
1-933964-04-9
Paperback 136 pgs. $14.00
Please include $2.00 for shipping and
handling.
From "Blue Moon Drive-In"
“What’s the story?” That’s what he used to say, my old
man. As he entered our room, Monopoly game spread out, records playing
loud, “Okay, what’s the story here?” We thought it was pretty obvious,
but we knew too that he’d been talking with Mom, hearing her complain
about “this shiftless bunch.” We never had any answer, never really
knew what that meant—“the story.” What was that—a lie, the secret, the
way things happened, what they all meant? What we’d do is make up some
excuse for what we must have done wrong. Sometimes he would offer
hints: “What’s the story on the grass cutting, boys?”
“Oh, yeah, Dad, it was kinda raining all morning,
and then we had to run to the store down town to get the ground meat
for the spaghetti sauce.”
David might jump in, “This afternoon we studied the
catechism for Reverend Taylor’s class. You know we’re joining the
church next Sunday.” Great touch.
“Okay,” Dad would say, walking away. “Just get it
done before Sunday.”
I started thinking of it at night, lying in bed
awake hearing David snore. There were all these kinds of stories. Each
of us could tell many from one incident—how the window got broken, how
the dog got loose, where the socket wrench set got to. And my story
would only be part of it even for me. We edit as we speak, you know.
Tomorrow I’d tell a different story, and none of it would be lies, and
all of it would. . . .
In Larry
Smith’s Faces
and Voices, the work
of telling stories is the work of both healing wounds and shaping the
world....After you
read these stories, you will take a closer look at the waitress who
refills your coffee, the man who cashes your check at the bank, the
couple in the car that passes you on the secondary highway. What these
monologues, letters and phone calls share is an urgency; with only the
bare truth to guide them, Smith’s characters struggle to make some
sense in the world, and through telling their stories, they
succeed.
-Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Q
Road
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 From MILLDUST
AND
ROSES: MEMOIRS
INSIDE THE NOISE
Yes, there were coal mines, and steel mills, and
factories. All of them grinding away at the edge of things–thin shudder
of the earth that we lived with, echoing roar of river inside the
hills.
It grew inside us.
It was the sound of a furnace under the floor
shaking the boards at our feet. Men and women who worked long in it
dissolved to deafness, began to speak with hands. Those who lived along
its edge learned to turn away.
Birds stood on fence posts, without any
necks, or flitted close to the ground.
Open any window, close any door, it was there, a slow and
steady rain that fell over everything. It was a death rattle there in
our chest, and our lives were clothes hanging out on the line without
rest.
Everyone knew but no one spoke.
POEM FROM STEEL
VALLEY: POSTCARDS
AND LETTERS
(letter poems)
Letter from FRANCO--WHEELING,
1920
Rosa, the people here grow grass
instead of tomoatoes--Americans,
they got the hair without the brains.
I am
living with
friends in a room
mostly working and sleeping.
Also I have a little garden
between the railroad and the river.
I salt the soil with my sweat,
and listen to the music in the water.
I sit on a rock at dusk,
think of a dark eyed girl
who is brushing her hair
in a nightgown before a mirror.
Maybe a goat rattles its bell
in the yard, and she looks out
to the east. When I look up
so gently it is raining.
Other Links [Books
may be ordered from]
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