Description: Tu Fu left this world. In Larry Smith�s fine narrative, he reappears in present day Cleveland. We see America through his eyes, through his contemplative heart. Hope, loss, friendship, love, the old quarrel with the world. Travel with him. Open your chest. Learn. �MAJ RAGAIN, author of Twist the Axe
Brief description: Larry Smith lives with his wife Ann in Huron, Ohio where he is professor emeritus of English and humanities from Firelands College of Bowling Green State University. He has studied at the Thoreau Institute and has written on the life and writings of Henry David Thoreau. He is the author of eight books of poetry, five books of fiction, and literary biographies of writers Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Smith is also writer-producer of two video programs on poets James Wright and Kenneth Patchen done with filmmaker Tom Koba.
His own memoirs have appeared in Milldust and Roses (2005) and The Thick of Thin: Memoirs of a Working-Class Writer (2017). He and Mei Hui Huang are co-translators of Chinese Zen Poems: What Hold Has This Mountain? and The Kanshi Poems Taigu Ryokan (both from Bottom Dog Press). He also published Songs of the Woodcutter: Zen Poems of Wang Wei and Taigu Ryokan (CD and booklet). In 1999 he received the Ohioana Poetry Award for his contributions to poetry in Ohio. Smith is the director of Bottom Dog Press, an independent Ohio literary publisher for over 30 years. .Review Quotes: Tu Fu Comes to America is a compelling verse novel depicting the poignant realities of working immigrants. Smith�s spare, sturdy lines flash with Buddhist insight as Tu Fu strives to provide for his family in Cleveland, �In the shopping bag, my work clothes./ On my back the white shirt Mei has ironed./ No yesterday or tomorrow, only now.� -RAY MCNIECE, author of Our Way of Life: Poems