Counting Descent

“A Small Needful Fact” by Ross Gay (2015)

Ross Gay responds to violence against African Americans. He explicitly names Eric Garner here and maintains his focus on the individual. Like Smith, Gay’s speaker is concerned with breath, life, and how the past shapes the future.

“Pangaea” by Clint Smith (2017)

This poem was originally published in the Rumpus. The speaker of this poem meditates on the supercontinent Pangaea and its split approximately 200 million years ago. Both the speakers in “Pangaea” and “Counting Descent” find ways to connect the past to the present. In this poem, the speaker mourns the distance between him and others as a result of the oceans between continents. He compares it to the silence in his daily life, both literal and metaphorical, after a bomb in Pakistan killed dozens of people “[j]ust the / other day” (Lines 14-15).

“the drone” by Clint Smith (2018)

This poem was published in the October 2018 issue of Poetry magazine. It is a significant formal departure from “Counting Descent.” This block poem features somewhat regular caesuras, a total lack of punctuation, and shorter, more fragmented phrases:

“the drone was once a scrap of metal        the drone looks as it if might be a toy     the drone is not a toy          the drone could have been something other than a killing machine    the drone could have been a house” (Lines 1-3)