Rod Smith

 

Books

Music or Honesty, (New York: Roof Books, 2003).
Poèmes de l'araignée, (Bordeaux, France: Un bureau sur l'atlantique, 2003).
The Good House (New York: Spectacular Books, 2001)
The New Mannerist Tricycle - with Lisa Jarnot & Bill Luoma (Philadelphia: Beautiful Swimmer, 2000)
Protective Immediacy (New York: Roof, 1999)
The Lack (love poems, targets, flags...) (Elmwood, CT.: Abacus, 1997).
In Memory of My Theories (Oakland: O Books, 1996)
A Grammar Manikan, Object 5: featuring Rod Smith, (New York, New York:
Object,1995).
The Boy Poems, (Washington, DC: Buck Downs Books, 1994).

Anthologies

"A Tract," Telling It Slant: Avant-Garde Poetics of the 1990s, ed Mark
Wallace and Steven Marks, (Tuscaloosa: Univerity of Alabame Press, 2002).

Four poems from In Memory of My Theories and Protective Immediacy, Antologija
novije americke poezije, ed. Dubravka Djuric et. al. (Serbia: Oktoih, 2001).

"Ted's Head," 100 Days, ed. Andrea Brady and Keston Sutherland, (Cambridge,
UK: Barque Press, 2001).

“4 poems from In Memory of My Theories,” New (American) Poetry, ed. Lisa
Jarnot, Leonard Schwartz, and Chris Stroffolino, (Hoboken: Talisman House,
forthcoming 1997).

"from CIA Sentences," A Poetics of Criticism, ed. Juliana Spahr, Mark
Wallace, Kristen Prevallet, and Pam Rehm, (Buffalo: Leave Books, 1994).

“XCII (cinder-sifter)” and poetics statement, o blek 12: Writing from the
New Coast, ed. Peter Gizzi, Connell McGrath, and Juliana Spahr, (Stockbridge:
The Garlic Press,1993).


Readings and Lectures

Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Canessa Park, San Francisco; The
College of William and Mary, Harrisburg, VA; Corcoran School of Art,
Washington, DC; District of Columbia Arts Center; The Drawing Center, NYC;
Duc Des Lombards, Paris, France; The Ear Inn, NYC; Fondation Royaumont,
Asnières-sur-Oise, France; Georgetown University, Washington, DC; George
Washington University, Washington, DC; Iota, Arlington, VA; The Kelly
Writer's House, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; The Kootenay
School of Writing, Vancouver, Canada; Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art,
Baltimore; New York University, NYC; Northern Virginia Community College,
Manassas, VA; The Poetry Project at Saint Mark’s Church in the Bowery, NYC;
The Segue Foundation, NYC; Small Press Traffic, San Francisco; State
University of New York at Albany; State University of New York at Buffalo;
Teachers and Writers, NYC; University of California at Santa Cruz; University
of Las Vegas, Nevada; University of Washington, Seattle; The Writer’s Center,
Bethesda, MD and others.


Additional Publications

Anomaly, Arras, Articulate, B City, The Baffler, Big Allis, The Baltimore
Sun, Bombay Gin, Boxkite (Australia), Caliban, Chain, Cathay, Columbia Poetry
Review, Combo, The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Enough, The Exact Change
Yearbook, Explosive, Folio, Gare du Nord (France), The Gertrude Stein Awards
in Innovative Poetry, The Germ, The Impercipient, Ixnay, Java (France),
Kenning, Lingo, New American Writing, Obaje (Bosnia), Open City, Open 24
Hours, Paper Air, Phoebe, Pom 2, Poésie (France), Poetics Journal, Pulse,
Raddle Moon (Canada), Shenandoah, Snare, So to Speak, The Tangent, Texture,
To: A Journal of Poetry, Prose, & the Visual Arts, Torque, Tripwire, Tyuonyi,
Van gogh's Ear (France), The Washington Review, and others.
______________________


Rod Smith was born in Gallipolis, Ohio in 1962 and grew up in Northern Virginia where he attended Stonewall Jackson High School. His first publication of poetry was a Ferlinghetti imitation in the Baltimore Sun in 1982. In the early 80s Smith was a rural carrier for the US Postal Service in the vicinity of the Manassas Battlefield, during which time he studied Pound, Stein, Williams, Ashbery, O'Hara, Oppen, and others. He began the journal Aerial with Wayne Kline in 1984 and published the first Edge Book in 1989. He moved to DC in 1987 and became part of the DC poetry community which included the writers Tina Darragh, Lynne Dreyer, P. Inman, Doug Lang, Joan Retallack, Phyllis Rosenzweig, and others. This group expanded over the years to include such writers as Leslie Bumstead, Jean Donnelly, Buck Downs, Heather Fuller, Mark McMorris, Carol Mirakove, Tom Orange, and Mark Wallace. He met John Cage in Rockville, Maryland in 1987 and saw him regularly, playing chess (usually losing), in Washington and New York until Cage's death in 1992. Smith managed Bick's Books from 1989 to 1992 and since 1993 has managed Bridge Street Books. While at Bick's and as a founding curator with Buck Downs, Joe Ross, and Sylvana Straw of the DCAC "In Your Ear" series he organized readings for Charles Bernstein, Cage, Kevin Davies, Carolyn Forche, Bob Perelman, Tom Raworth, Leslie Scalapino, Diane Ward, and others. The many readers at Bridge Street since 1993 have included Bruce Andrews, Rae Armantrout, Anselm Berrigan, Lee Ann Brown, Norma Cole, Tim Davis, Peter Gizzi, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Lisa Jarnot, Melanie Neilson, Alice Notley, Lisa Robertson, David Shapiro, Juliana Spahr, Edwin Torres, and Rosmarie Waldrop. He has taught creative writing at George Mason University where he is finishing his MFA. He currently teaches Cultural Studies at Towson University. Smith's son Joshua died in an auto accident at the age of sixteen. His daughter Alexandra, a talented young artist and writer, lives with her mother the poet Gretchen Johnsen in Washington, DC.

______________________