{"product_id":"9781400848034","title":"Almanac: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eAlmanac\u003c\/i\u003e is a collection of lyrical and narrative poems that celebrate, and mourn the passing of, the world of the small family farm. But while the poems are all involved in some way with the rural Midwest, particularly with the people and land of the northwestern Illinois dairy farm where Austin Smith was born and raised, they are anything but merely regional. As the poems reflect on farm life, they open out to speak about childhood and death, the loss of tradition, the destruction of the natural world, and the severing of connections between people and the land.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e This collection also reflects on a long poetic apprenticeship. Smith's father is a poet himself, and \u003ci\u003eAlmanac\u003c\/i\u003e is in part a meditation about the responsibility of the poet, especially the young poet, when it falls to him to speak for what is vanishing. To quote another Illinois poet, Thomas James, Smith has attempted in this book to write poems \"clear as the glass of wine \/ on [his] father's table every Christmas Eve.\" By turns exhilarating and disquieting, this is a remarkable debut from a distinctive new voice in American poetry.\u003cbr\u003e______\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cb\u003eFrom \u003ci\u003eAlmanac\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTHE MUMMY IN THE FREEPORT ART MUSEUM\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003ci\u003eAustin Smith\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e  Amongst the masterpieces of the small-town\u003cbr\u003e Picassos and Van Goghs and photographs\u003cbr\u003e of the rural poor and busts of dead Greeks\u003cbr\u003e or the molds of busts donated by the Art\u003cbr\u003e Institute of Chicago to this dying\u003cbr\u003e town's little museum, there was a mummy,\u003cbr\u003e a real mummy, laid out in a dim-lit\u003cbr\u003e room by himself. I used to go\u003cbr\u003e to the museum just to visit him, a pharaoh\u003cbr\u003e who, expecting an afterlife\u003cbr\u003e of beautiful virgins and infinite food\u003cbr\u003e and all the riches and jewels\u003cbr\u003e he'd enjoyed in earthly life,\u003cbr\u003e must have wondered how the hell\u003cbr\u003e he'd ended up in Freeport, Illinois.\u003cbr\u003e And I used to go alone into that room\u003cbr\u003e and stand beside his sarcophagus and say,\u003cbr\u003e \"My friend, I've asked myself the same thing.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47137729183984,"sku":"9781400848034","price":13.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781400848034_p0.jpg?v=1763712703","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781400848034","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}