place, plus, pulse

Some words on my collection 'Wasp, gasp' (Incunabula 2023).

I have lived in Ohio, and experienced its liminal qualities. Both an antiheaven and an antihell, it has the peculiar promise of being illegible from within and without. The narrator's body in Wasp, gasp is also illegible in this way, vibrating slowly between life, death and something else. In this space made by vibration, another something-else can emerge, in sonic play and folding images. God and dog circle one another then flop onto the ground, roll around. I know the demands of a liminal body in a place that won't hold it, what that might create. Barton Smock invites a reader to enter that zone too, the place that is a mode of being, one form of secret (or secret form) revealed: 

The more internal/ the life, the longer/ the past./ A velvet cricket.

-Jay Besemer, poet, author of Men and Sleep

**A reading from 'Wasp, gasp.' 
***I also have two signed copies of the work, which are 15.00, and you can pay via:

paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp $BartonSmock

****Also, some words on Jay Besemer's Men and Sleep, here.

~~~

Also:

A few individuals know about and/or have a collection of mine called 'the tornado that lost our emptiness' - it is currently all poems from my collections released 2020-2023, and I intend to keep it and update it as an ongoing record. I've left it off my publications as it doesn't fall under pay what you want because of its size (750+ pages) and mail cost, etc. Anyway, if one wants it, it's 15.00 minimum for the paperback (with cover image by Noah Michael Smock), and 20.00 minimum hardback (no cover image).

can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp $BartonSmock

And, as always or never, there are these, below, which are pay what you want:

Animal Masks On the Floor of the Ocean
124 pages
poems, June 2019

MOTHERLINGS
52 pages
poems, June 2019

an old idea one had of stars
58 pages
poems, February 2020

rocks have the softest shadows
237 pages
poems, Dec 2020

untouched in the capital of soon
187 pages
poems, Sept 2021

blood to bathe us in its blue past
217 pages
poems new and selected, May 2022

apartures
125 pages
poems, January 2023

deer as permission to die in ohio
43 poems
chapbook, April 2023

*If not comfortable providing a physical address, you can request a PDF copy with an inquiry to bartonsmock@yahoo.com