so I did this really long rather awkward reading from my last two self-publications but I do mean what I say or at least what one can hear of it: hard copies available, PAY WHAT YOU WANT: untouched in the capital of soon, 187 pages poems, Sept 2021 can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2 or CashApp: $BartonSmock blood to bathe us in its blue past, 217 pages poems new and selected, May 2022 can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2 or CashApp: $BartonSmock PDFs at GUMROAD
I have all the words that have gone missing to say that I am thankful for being in the August 2021 run of Poem-A-Day at poets.org as guest edited by Kazim Ali Read my poem here about the poem: “I can't speak for all fathers, but my own fathering is littered with necessary and fake finalities. As such, I wrote this poem by hand on a small piece of paper while worrying about the long and short lives of my children. In the spacing of the poem, I tried to honor the little room I'd given myself for its projected concerns.” —Barton Smock
snow has to be the loneliest food
A son goes online in a country of grief. In a city of sayings. My teeth don’t fit, is one. Puberty struck the wrong dollhouse match, is another. Enough, though, of that. Angels don’t have a language. Pain uses its ghost to bite god in a dream.
*all collections are pay what you want, be sure to include your mailing address in the comments of the order. any questions can be directed to bartonsmock@yahoo.com **Free PDFs to anyone wanting to write a review/reflection on the work. Make request to bartonsmock@yahoo.com PRIVATELY SELF-PUBLISHED WORKS, as such: rocks have the softest shadows, 237 pages poems, Dec 2020 can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2 or CashApp: $BartonSmock untouched in the capital of soon, 187 pages poems, Sept 2021 can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2 or CashApp: $BartonSmock blood to bathe us in its blue past, 217 pages poems new and selected, May 2022 can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2 or CashApp: $BartonSmock apartures, 125 pages poems, January 2023 can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2 or CashApp: $BartonSmock ~ HERE IS A COOL THING
Lightning finds a vein. Password sends a nude.
Unending angel of a terrified stomach. Tadpole, eye’s daydream.
Lili Taylor in Bright Angel, 1990, directed by Michael Fields ~ A performance so present as to author time. It gets ahead of you, but comes back at the right moments. . Donald Elise Watkins in Emergency, 2022, directed by Carey Williams ~ A vividly internal performance- sad, funny, long lived-in, rented. Two reaction shots in particular left me with that trinity of witness made holy by anger, intimacy, and indictment. . Anthony LaPaglia Judy Davis in Nitram, 2021, directed by Justin Kurzel ~ Caleb Landry Jones, of course, is killer in this...but it's LaPaglia and Davis who give it its distant intimacy, its weak-as-a-twig horizon. . Clifton Collins, Jr. Molly Parker Moises Arias in Jockey, 2021, directed by Clint Bentley ~ I don't really have words for what each of these people do in this film except to say there are silences here in each that erase history not to rewrite it but to write it as remembered the first time. . Sean Harris in The Stranger, 2022, directed by Thomas M Wright ~ Evil gets amnesia again and again, and Harris changes passwords enough to create new and terrifying permissions. . Anna Gunn Janeane Garofalo in The Apology, 2022, directed by Alison Locke ~ Gunn is all eyesight and abyss, weariness and void. Holds the center gently with an outer, flown-in, brutality. And Garofalo, damn. When she shows up in the final third, her comic timing is a fury that lightens nothing. . Andrea Riseborough Allison Janney in To Leslie, 2022, directed by Michael Morris ~ Riseborough is an anxious predictor of the past, dancing for both stoplight and spotlight, and gives a performance that has a few steps on creation. Must mention here her other films as well, that I saw this year, Here Before and Nancy. Riseborough is so fucking good. And Janney does work here that she's made a transient home of before, but gets to go deeper than usual and gives place a spot to remember. . Kelli Garner in What Josiah Saw, 2022, directed by Vincent Grashaw ~ All the performances here - Nick Stahl, Scott Haze, Jake Weber, Robert Patrick- deserve strong and correct words, but from the moment Garner's Mary puts the path in her path with the body language of anti-destination, the movie makes a scenic witness of its periphery and goes about vicariously burning itself beside the salvage of Garner's nervously resigned vision. . Alison Pill Sarah Gadon Mare Winningham in All My Puny Sorrows, 2021, directed by Michael McGowan ~ Alison Pill and Sarah Gadon glow wounded in performances that separately heal, and Mare Winningham keeps detail as something some god has locally misplaced. I was glad for how Pill baptized the submerged, and for how Gadon let others believe they’d invented the headlight. . Amanda Seyfried in A Mouthful of Air, 2021, directed by Amy Koppelman ~ Seyfried claims so many new moments in this that it's hard to say if she belongs to it or it belongs to her but the whole thing is a given possession. . Aisha Dee in Sissy, 2022, directed by Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes ~ Dee gives an otherworldly un-mirrored performance that is both exodus and revelation, and moves the end times back into the middle where belief must re-earn its brutal beginnings. . Thandiwe Newton in God's Country, 2022, directed by Julian Higgins ~ Newton is radar and blip, and never fails to locate the strayings of her lived-in living out. . Mia Goth in Pearl, 2022, directed by Ti West ~ Goth levels heaven and brings up the hell with a performance in so much local pain that what lands becomes less alien the more it invades. There is one scene so held by Goth that it makes of the eye a eulogy for every unmourned keyhole. . Anna Diop in Nanny, 2022, directed by Nikyatu Jusu ~ In a film both timeworn and newly doomed, Diop gives a fictile performance of spiritual and physical fluidity. . Rebecca Hall Grace Kaufman in Resurrection, 2022, directed by Andrew Semans ~ A possessed and wholly overtaken showing from Rebecca Hall. And Grace Kaufman moves the happening from under the accident with a waiting lonely enough to cradle the hurting young and uncarried old. .
extra i know but we’re not ok
Have privately self published a new collection titled apartures Pocketbook style, 125 pages, January 2023 collection is pay what you want can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2 or CashApp: $BartonSmock
Cannibal on the moon, ghost at the piano. The rain gone missing.
Have privately self published a new collection titled apartures Pocketbook style, 125 pages, January 2023 collection is pay what you want can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2 or CashApp: $BartonSmock
kingsoftrain 