Above Ground

Instant #1 New York Times bestselling author

Author of How the Word is Passed- PEN America 2022 John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist / Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Awards / NBC News, one of 10 Books about Black History to Read in 2022 / A New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021/ A Time 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2021 / Named a Best Book of 2021 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Economist, Smithsonian, Esquire, Entropy, The Christian Science Monitor, WBEZ's Nerdette Podcast, TeenVogue, GoodReads, SheReads, BookPage, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Fathom Magazine, the New York Public Library, and the Chicago Public Library

An accessible and moving second book of poems from Clint Smith, the instant #1 New York Times bestselling author of How the Word is Passed.

The number one New York Times bestselling author, intellectual, and spoken word poet Clint Smith gives his devoted readers a collection of poetry straight from the heart. It is a meditation on the country he studies through the lens of all he has learned from fatherhood. The poems are manifestations of Smith's wisdom and latest observations, starting with the precarious birth of his son, to the current political and social state of the country, to childhood memories, and back again. Smith traverses the periods of his life from four different cities and the process of realizing what it means to build a life that orbits around his family. Amid all of it, he has watched as the country has been forced to confront the ugliest manifestations of itself, and he has thought about what it means to raise children amid the backdrop of political tumult.

Smith is a poet who uses the form to interrogate his own autobiography and the state of the country today, affording those who prefer reading poetry a shot of news, and those who normally seek out nonfiction, some lyrical beauty.

Above Ground is a lyrical, sometimes narrative work of poetry that follows from Smith's first book of poetry, Counting Descent.