Album Notes

Jared Smith is a prominent figure in contemporary poetry, technology research, and professional continuing education. Having earned his BA cum laude and his MA in English and American Literature from New York University, he spent many years in industry and research.

Jared has six critically acclaimed volumes of poetry to date. These include: Where Images Become Imbued With Time (Puddin'head Press, Chicago, 2007); Lake Michigan And Other Poems (Puddin'head Press, Chicago, 2005); Walking The Perimeters Of The Plate Glass Window Factory (Birch Brook Press, New York, 2001); Keeping The Outlaw Alive (Erie Street Press, Chicago, 1988); Dark Wing (Charred Norton Publishing, New York, 1984); and Song Of The Blood: An Epic (The Smith Press, New York, 1983). His first CD, Seven Minutes Before The Bombs Drop, was released by Artvilla Records in 2006, with original music performed by David Michael Jackson and Andy Derryberry.

Lem Roby is a guitarist and composer as well as the driving force behind the band Jack Salamander.

What Others Have Written Of Jared Smith's Work

"I like your I-witness of the Song in our blood...it's a pleasure."
--Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"...utterly original and as solid an any poetry that's being written today. It has a firm grasp of form, it has its own unique music in line after line of low-key symbolist imagery, and it is also austerely disrespectful of all the right things. I like this poetry a lot."
--William Packard

"There is a kind of certainty that seems to characterize Jared Smith's best work, an understanding about place and the flow of spirit that makes you think of Thoreau along with a commitment as fierce as that of Pablo Neruda."
--Joseph Bruchac

"Again and again, Jared Smith takes us into a world that we feel is strange and impossible, only to make us see, suddenly, that this IS our life, our condition, and until now we have been shying away from reality. Years ago, on my author-interview show on NPR, I hailed Jared as 'the most important new voice in American poetry since Walt Whitman.'"
--Walter James Miller