Lawrence R. Smith is the author of a book of poems: The Plain Talk of the Dead, two novels: The Map of Who We Are and Annie's Soup Kitchen, a translated novel: Antonio Porta's The King of the Storeroom, and a book of poems, with Michelle Yeh: Yang Mu's No Trace of the Gardener. He edited and translated The New Italian Poetry: 1945 to the Present, edited Caliban (1986-1995) and Calibanonline (2010-2021). His work has appeared The Paris Review, New American Writing, Kayak, The Chicago Review, The Iowa Review, Gargoyle, Poetry East, Brilliant Corners, Clade Song, Otoliths, Survision, Alfabeta, and many other magazines.

"[A]ll mountains live beneath / seeing, and the gods dive into / their deepest breath of darkness," Lawrence R. Smith tells us in his stunning new collection, Other Sacred. Sometimes a book may open into us; sometimes we open into it. These visionary poems work toward dissolving such dichotomies, as we and this book simultaneously flower into one another. Thus, Other Sacred, is anything but other. Poem after poem guides us toward a luminous knowledge within. Whether it's "Waking in bed with a young giraffe" or questioning whether it's "grief or shame that makes . . . [us] turn away," or discovering that "All light is a symptom / that tips the cap of darkness," or realizing that "Buried fire is still fire, whether we see it or not," Smith's images recall the Bretonian urge to cultivate "the marvelous." These finely honed poems teem with power and exude exploding stars from a directness and compression of language. This book takes us on a vision quest from the inner worlds into a wider cultural sphere that gains profundity by virtue of the poet having explored the translucent border between meditative and public space. Lawrence R. Smith's Other Sacred is a wonderful accomplishment that deserves to be read again and again."

—George Kalamaras, former Poet Laureate of Indiana (2014-2016)

"I've read "Bird Signs" at three different points over the past couple days, and each time I end up with an inner glow that can only happen when one has absorbed at least a portion of an incandescent poem."

— William Mohr

" . . . the poems don’t differentiate what's out in the world and in the body & mind. Egalitarian, all the spheres. The language is open-armed in an upward and opening way that clears the air. Revises the fundamentals!"

—Janet Kauffman