Clare's Empire: Poems

Jordan Smith is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry, most recently Clare's Empire (published by The Hydroelectric Press), a fantasia on the life and work of English poet, John Clare, which deals with class and environment, poetry and madness, economy and profligacy, beauty and vulgarity. The subjects of his previous collections range from the landscape of the Mohawk Valley, to fiddle tunes and old time string bands, to fathers and sons, to opera, to rat cheese and ale, to movies, to fishing, to ladies mandolin societies, to the Beats, to cornet solos in a town park gazebo, to the track at Saratoga Springs. Sandra MacPherson wrote about his work that "the Americana seems so throughly a part of these poems, so integrated with their metaphysics, that it's good for the soul." He lives in upstate New York, where he is Edward E. Hale Jr., Professor of English at Union College.