Thoreau's Lost Journal: Poems

by Larry Smith

Here are poems as dramatic projections of the character and spirit of this American author and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau. In Smith's poems we get inside the mind and heart of Thoreau and see his life as his greatest work of art. One gains a deeper appreciation of Thoreau as person and an enlightened spirit of America.

From the Author: I am endebted to the biographers of Thoreau, and to those who kept record of his correspondence, journals, and writings. "Myths were made to blow new life into," says Albert Camus, and I have attempted from my affinity with Thoreau to make him come to life again in these poems.

Author Biography: Larry Smith is the author of seven books of poetry and the co-translator of CHINESE ZEN POEMS: WHAT HOLD HAS THIS MOUNTAIN (Bottom Dog Press). He is a Thoreau scholar and literary biographer of Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. His poems have appeared widely.

Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Paperback

First published February 19, 2001

About the author

Smith is the author of 9 books of poetry and 6 books of fiction as well as two memoirs and two literary biographies of Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He is married to Ann Smith, a professor of nursing, with 3 adult children and 8 grandchildren. He taught at BGSU Firelands College in Ohio for 38 years. His most recent work includes The Thick of Thin: Memoirs of a Working-Class Writer (2017) and Thoreau's Lost Journal: Poems (2018, new enlarged edition).

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

From "In Which Henry David Walks with an Old Friend"

"A true friend is God's gift, is God himself.
Waldo goes off a lecturing down the coast
pressing palms of society, leaving his tribe behind,
while I stay at home pressing sycamore leaves
between the pages of my journal.
The air eats their skin, leaving delicate skeletons,
a living lace to suggest what has been." (29)