Marem Ruth’s Reviews > Wade in the Water: Poems > Status Update

Not that enthused by the book. The longer poems and those with a lot of diction aren't poetic and stand in stark contrast to the shorter poems with higher conceptual language. If each were its own book, it would be different, but instead it feels like I'm wading into still waters and raging waters.

Glad to be out of the second section. Smith's language is more poetic when it's actual poems instead of vernacular iterations. I liked the second section, but it's not really poetry and isn't as strong as the other, more traditional poems with the same themes.

Loved the first section, but the second, while thematically contained, is in stark contrast to the first.