Room Tone (ePub)

The "dailyness" in a Vanessa Smith poem is never dull, and never what's expected. Her west-coast swagger is reminiscent of early Joni Mitchell - "my face, like an interview, / tells the most important / stories first." Her "uploaded anguish," is that of a speaker who "wipes daily dabs of lipstick on the car carpet," saturating the space, making a hole in its place. She sees that a "rolling wave held something back in response to the sand..." and finds a tragedy there. The daughter of a portrait painter, this painter/poet's first collection is clear-eyed and insightful, poetry that points to her inheritance, a vigilant and insistent gauging: "We wait, we dry out into plaster, and become the wall / The dry and cold of a California I never mastered is coming back in plumes."

-Elaine Sexton, poet and critic, author of Drive and Prospect/Refuge

This is so moving and delicate - the journey from caring for infants to looking after the elderly and their needs, and all the tenderness and sense of employment (and possibly enjoyment) both require. The rhythms of marriage and divorce work so well on the page. Smith is so right in what she says about January - the way it is always twice as long as any other month. I like the sense of the world in which every tiny thing counts for something and the cost of that on the heart and soul and the corresponding yield...

-Susie Boyt, author of Loved and Missed and My Judy Garland Life

Room Tone is wildly evanescent - traversing expanses of time and space, then spiraling into the palm of Smith's hand. ... [Her] poems are illuminated by a ferocious sense of beauty and tragedy, converging in sublime insight.

-Broughton Coburn, author of The Vast Unknown and Aama in America

In Room Tone, silence is rendered palpable through Vanessa Smith's hauntingly described scenes of life, love and loss. Whether it's observation or imagination, there's a meditative nature to her writing that will transport you to a state of personal reflection. This collection is a call to open your heart to the mysteries that surround us.

-Sara Arnell, author of There Will Be Lobster: Memoir of A Midlife Crisis