ROD SMITH’S DEED
March 16th, 2008Lawrence Giffin
Political Topology in Contemporary North American Poetry:
Rod Smith’s «Deed»
“If the house is just poetry
we’re in trouble.”
— Rod Smith “The Good House”
“So, why a poem? Because a poem can represent the subject’s symbolic position in its world, how it justifies its deeds in that world, and how, through arranging a speech that speaks only half-truths, it can discover the truth of that relation in spite of itself.
Why a house? Because one’s entrance into history occurs within a given frame, and that frame become a question for the freedom that work inaugurates.”