Monthly Book Report: Above Ground by Clint Smith

I became a Clint Smith fan reading his work in The Atlantic.  Then I picked up his book How the Word is Passed and my admiration grew exponentially.  Smith’s work is thoughtful, deeply engaged with history, personal without being cloying, amused by the human condition but also deeply honest about where racism has landed us as a nation.  I persuaded my book group to read How the Word is Passed.  I assigned chapters of it to my 8th graders and it generated the most amazing conversations.  So of course I was going to read his new book of poems.  

As expected, Smith doesn’t disappoint.  In this collection about being a father and husband, as he reflects on family and the things he loves most - soccer, his wife, his children - I was utterly charmed.  

I am worried that this nation is on the precipice of a spectacular failure of community and democracy.  But when Smith reflects on waiting for a heartbeat to emerge in his wife’s early pregnancy and writes, 

little one

you are my daily reminder

that you do not go to a garden to watch 

the flowers grow

you go to give thanks

for what has already bloomed

Well, that takes my breath away and gives me a tiny sliver of enduring hope for us all.