I'm pleased to announce the publication of Frank Barry Smith's, POP SMOKE & PRAY, which I'm releasing under the imprint, LRS X PRESS, and thru POD.

What, another trinomial Smith, you ask? Yes, that's right, Frank Barry Smith is the father of... you guessed it, me, the one, the only, Logan Ryan Smith.

Shocker, huh.

So, this is a book I promised my dad some years ago to publish. I had, back in 2000 or 2001 or so made some crudely home-made copies of this book, with the hope to one day release it more officially.

Surprisingly, I never won the lottery; and, in fact, my salaries since 2001 have gotten lower. Go figure.

Thusly, my perpetual state of financial crisis. And so the best means to me of putting out a respectable edition of my father's book, POP SMOKE & PRAY, was to go the route of POD.

POP SMOKE & PRAY was written during and around the years of my father's time spent in the Vietnam War-- between the years of 1968 and 1976. And it's been a book he's worked on up until this publication. It's a gorgeous book of poetry that transcends its central subject matter of war.

For now you can find POP SMOKE & PRAY available over here at LULU for a very reasonable price. Eventually you will also be able to find this book thru all the major online distributors.

BIO:
Frank Barry Smith, now retired and living in Washington state, served as a combat medic in the Vietnam War. He studied poetry under Philip Levine, Robert Mezey, and John Logan.

I'll end this announcement with the book's opening poem.

--------------------------------------------

To Bob and Pat Stallman
the Idaho Kids


I had promised to write long letters
but it was Summer
and I had sat by the Bay
hating my job and saying nothing.
I didn’t write anything down,
even in the shower
where no one heard.
I drank July off the wall

In August I imagined you
plummeting like a young bird
toward the smoking forests of Montana;
waiting for the round pop
of the parachute
while Pat shelved soup cans
singing to the record player
uncertain about dinner.

I boarded long-distance buses
and rode drunk
across the surface of California
until I found myself in Sacramento
in September
and fled to Oregon
becoming
a part-time school teacher.

I dried in the Klamath wind.

By then you’d returned to
The City
to find another apartment.
I watched the snow fall
among red drying apples
that still hung from the leafless trees
beyond my land-locked window.

You moved from lectures
when I was lecturing
the faces of the children
of Modoc and Klamath.
We had our places
in rooms in America.
And then it was Christmas
and I received a green card
saying: “We are alive,
and in a hurry,
and there is always
love here.”
I noticed that we had
the same address
in different towns.

In February, after packing,
I drove South
through a break in the weather.
The Government was writing me
from an office in California.
I went to have myself inspected
in Fresno,
thinking they could not
know of the war there
and I wouldn’t be called.

It didn’t work.

When I saw you again,
you said, “I’ll get beer
Pat will be home soon,
and pregnant.”
And she was.
We found ourselves laughing
all the way through April
when we pushed through
rush hour traffic
with your bed in the back
of my truck to lay a quick claim
on your new house.
Later, leaving that house
I met your mailman
who thought I was you.
He gave me the white
government envelope
and I took it upstairs
into Pat’s anger.

This morning my own mail
was the same
printed in small letters:
“approval not required”

I had promised to write
long letters,
but the Summer is coming on.

. . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . .MARCH 1968