kingsoftrain

thru May 14^th, Lulu is offering 10% off all print books and free mail shipping (or 50% off ground) with coupon code of BOOKSHIP18

 

*

 

most recent work, mine:

 

~

 

eating the animal back to life
10.00
315 pages
published July 2015

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/eating-the-animal-back-to-life/paperback/product-22277755.html

 

of which Kazim Ali says:

 

Speaking of being captivated, when I was in Cleveland’s most exciting new independent bookstore, Guide to Kulchur, I picked up on a whim a few small volumes that appeared to have been published by the author using Lulu. I was so entranced by the seemingly simple but endlessly complex, prickly lyrics that I wrote to the author, Barton Smock, through his blog, kingsoftrain.wordpress.com. He’s been sending me books now and then and his latest, Eating the Animal Back to Life, is just knocking me out. These poems are desperate, tender, wry, alarmed, god-obsessed, and musically driven. Smock is not published by others, he does it all himself and so the only place you can get his books is here. All the advanced degrees and publishing credentials in the world can’t get you the unspeakable duende that Smock somehow taps into, poem after poem.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/poetry-foundation/reading-list-november-201_b_8538050.html

 

~

 

earth is part earth and there’s a hole in the sound I made you from
9.00
98 pages
published December 2015

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/earth-is-part-earth-and-theres-a-hole-in-the-sound-i-made-you-from/paperback/product-22503167.html

 

~

 

MOON tattoo
9.00
114 pages
published March 2016

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/moon-tattoo/paperback/product-22621263.html

 

…The result of this type of work is that a poem might seem fractured, when it is not. Smock works with both image and symbol in order to create poems that are iconoclastic, alpha and omega…

as reviewed by Krystal Sierra:
http://krystalsierra.blogspot.com/2016/05/between-language-and-narrative.html?m=1

 

~

 

infant*cinema, Dink Press, April 2016
7.00 (first non self-published work)

 

https://www.dinkpress.com/store/infant-cinema-barton-smock-dp2

 

of which, the some that said, say:

 

Barton Smock’s newest book is filled with enigmatic poetry honed to the barest minimum of language, without a scintilla of excess. In one poem and elsewhere, Smock states that he “does not want to be seen as a person,” and the scant information he has shared in various publications and the rare interview certainly reveals little but that he is a father, husband, likes movies, and writes daily. Yet in infant * cinema, poems that first appear as fragmentary and surreal dreams, prayers, visions, or confessions still evoke a completeness that lacks nothing, wants nothing. Smock reveals a world filled with grief, death, suicides, disabling conditions, and a family’s complex relationships across generations. While the poems mention “lonesome objects,” “melancholy,” “numbness,” and “collected sorrows,” Smock’s masterfully minimalist poetry leaves the reader intoxicated by a rush of original details and bleakly exquisite imagery.
~Donna Snyder, author of Poemas ante el Catafalco: Grief and Renewal (Chimbarazu Press) and I Am South (Virgogray Press)

 

Infant Cinema can only come from the mind of one writer, Barton Smock. I’ve been following his work for 10 years, and the only thing I’ve come to expect for certain is that I will be transported to a world thick with an atmosphere of vivid imagery, and seemingly juxtaposed and ironic concepts. Infant Cinema is prose that has all those elements, and reads with heightened poetic force.
~Joseph Jengehino, author of Ghost of the Animal (Birds and Bones Press)

 

With sparse language, Barton Smock creates semi-prose poems that contain concentrated riddles, such as in the line “follow the spider’s trail of abandoned birthmarks” or “one of us is dreaming I entered your body.” There are clues across poems, of a broken family, of disbelief in religion and reality, and of the pain stemming from all of that and more. The question of the nature of pain itself is put forth, and its origin: “before it began to go everywhere without him, was pain god?” An evocation of both the trinity (namely, god as his own son) and a child’s jarring transition into independence, which can be destructive to the self and others, for who is so easily prepared for the world? The poems are without titles, except for the title of the chapbook as a whole: infant*cinema. “inside my father I can’t hear one tv over another. […] the people watching the fight want to be seen looking at it.” As soon as we begin to concretely process our surroundings as infants, we must absorb or cancel out competing stimuli, but even so we need to learn what is what. By then, we may have seen too much, the violence of disappointment, loneliness, and, more often than one would like to admit, mental and physical abuse. But is this what makes humans human?
~George Salis

 

/

 

~

 

shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner (& other poems)
7.00
114 pages
published June 2016

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/shuteye-in-the-land-of-the-sacred-commoner/paperback/product-22744790.html

 

~

 

FOUR
12.00
340 pages
published June 2016

 

~ this is a combined publication of these four collections: earth is part earth and there’s a hole in the sound I made you from / MOON tattoo / infant*cinema / shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner [& other poems] ~

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/four/paperback/product-22756947.html

 

~

 

depictions of reentry
9.00
146 pages
published August 2016

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/depictions-of-reentry/paperback/product-22811652.html

 

~

 

hick lore rabbit hole
9.00
124 pages
published October 2016

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/hick-lore-rabbit-hole/paperback/product-22914385.html

 

~

 

pictures of god don’t sell
12.00
378 pages
published December 2016

(newer poems and poems selected from eating the animal back to life, as well as collections depictions of reentry and hick lore rabbit hole in full)

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/pictures-of-god-dont-sell/paperback/product-22977531.html

 

~

 

surprise for me a crow
8.00
104 pages
published January 2017

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/surprise-for-me-a-crow/paperback/product-23034353.html

 

~

 

name calling
9.00
110 pages
published March 2017

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/name-calling/paperback/product-23117082.html

 

~

 

paw five
9.00
130 pages
published May 2017

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/paw-five/paperback/product-23198602.html

 

~

 

the boy who touched all the eggs
11.00
258 pages
published June 2017

 

-this is a combined publication of three previous works (surprise for me a crow / name calling / paw five) as well as some newer poems

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/the-boy-who-touched-all-the-eggs/paperback/product-23224033.html

 

~

 

L A I T Y
8.00
116 pages
published August 2017

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/l-a-i-t-y/paperback/product-23291654.html

 

~

 

everything I touch remembers being my hand
9.00
172 pages
published November 2017

 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/everything-i-touch-remembers-being-my-hand/paperback/product-23423003.html

 

~

 

author spotlight on lulu:

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad

 

all book previews on site are the viewed book in its entirety.  will send free PDFs per request.  also, all titles will be sent free in hard copy to those interested in writing a review.  inquire, request, here:  bartonsmock@yahoo.com or bartsmock@gmail.com

 

donations:  https://www.paypal.me/BartonSmock