In a phone interview, Smith recalled leaving Monticello, the Whitney Plantation or Angola Prison and turning to poetry as a way to decompress. Smith wrote many of the poems in his second collection while he was working on “How the Word Is Passed,” which explores the shadow of slavery through nine places that bear its legacy. Like Smith’s son and daughter - the undisputed stars of his new book - these best sellers arrived in the world less than two years apart. However, in the three years I’ve been scrutinizing best-seller lists, I’ve never seen an author nail the feat Clint Smith just pulled off: Following a nonfiction juggernaut (“ How the Word Is Passed,” which the Book Review named one of the 10 Best Books of 2021), he has published “ Above Ground,” a poetry collection that shares chart space with novels by Jeannette Walls, Curtis Sittenfeld and Barbara Kingsolver. Best-selling poetry isn’t unheard-of - ask Ocean Vuong, Rupi Kaur and Amanda Gorman.
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