—BOOKS—

Tu Fu Comes to America: A Story in Poems. March Street Press 2010
The Long River Home: A Novel. Working Lives Series, Bottom Dog Press 2009
The Kanshi Poems of Taigu Ryokan, trans. by Larry Smith and Mei Hui Liu Huang. Bottom Dog Press 2008.
Faces and Voices: Tales. Bird Dog Publishing 2006.
A River Remains: Poems. WordTech Publishing 2006.
Milldust & Roses: Memoirs. Ridgeway Press 2005; second edition by Bottom Dog Press 2005.
Thoreau's Lost Journal: Poems by Larry Smith. Westron Press, 2001.
Kenneth Patchen: Rebel Poet in America. A Consortium of  Small Presses, 2000.    Biography. 
Chinese Zen Poems: What Hold Has This Mountain? trans. Bottom Dog Press, 1998.
Working It Out (novel) Ridgeway Press, 1998.
Beyond Rust: Novella and Stories. Bottom Dog Press, 1995.
Steel Valley: Postcards and Letters (Poems). Pig Iron Press, 1992.
Ohio Zen Poems with  d. steven conkle (A Twinbook) Bottom Dog Press, 1989.
Across These States (Journal Poem) Bottom Dog Press, 1985.
Scissors, Paper, Rock (Prose Poems) Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1982.
Echo Without Sound (Poems with Etchings by Stephen Smigocki) Northwoods Press, 1982.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Poet-at-Large (Literary biography) Southern Illinois Univeristy Press, 1983.
Kenneth Patchen (Literary biography) Twayne Series, G.K.Hall Publishers, 1978
—FILMS—

[Two docu-drama video programs, written, co-directed and co-produced with Tom Koba;
 funded through Ohio Humanities Council and Ohio Arts Counci.]
 James Wright's Ohio (30 minutes, 1986-1987) 
 Kenneth Patchen: An Art of Engagement (30 and 45 minutes, 1987-1988)
   DVD double program:
  d.a.levy: Cleveland Rebel Poet of the Mimeograph Revolution
  (Interview with Ed Sanders/ Memorial Reading at levyfest 2005).

Book co-editor for:





Come Together: Imagine Peace
with Ann Smith and Philip Metres (2008)










Cleveland Poetry Scenes: A Panorama and Anthology
with Mary E. Weems and Nina Freedlander Gibans (2008)













d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution
with Ingrid Swanberg (2007)

Also:
Working Hard for the Money: America's Working Poor in Stories, Essays, Poems and Photos 
with Mary E. Weems (2002);
Writing Work: Writers on Working-Class Writing (1999);
Getting By: Stories of   Working Lives (1996);
Coffeehouse Poetry Anthology  (1996);
In Buckeye Country: Photos and Essays (1994);
A Red Shadow of Steel Mills: Photos and Poems (1990).
Managing Editor of  Heartlands: A Magazine of Midwest Life and Art. (1998-2008)
All Above Titles Available Through Bottom Dog Press

The Long River Home: A Novel

by Larry Smith

       The boy lies there waiting a long time smelling the spring earth, till he hears them go, footsteps through underbrush. This other song of loving and longing can wait. The birds return bringing with them memories of his grandfather—their fishing together, working at his side, scoring the baseball games, talking on rides to the lumberyard. These are not gone.
He breathes in and out. Memories remain. He closes his eyes to an image of his grandfather’s face which fades into that of his father. He lies there alone staring up through trees till the morning clouds seem to still and he and the earth move under them. And in the green leaves dancing with life above him, he sees the broken parts of sunlight and sky as a sign of something deeper, something more. His grandfather’s loss, this sense of distances, and this new longing he feels for love—is all part of life’s change. Everything is deparitng and everthing is arriving.
      He rises knowing that he stands in a grace of the land and the woods that remain. As he begins his slow walk down that familiar valley, he looks out over the river and hills and feels in blood and memory what holds him. The great river runs through this deep valley, and its waters will rise and fall again and again, creeping into houses bringing mud and decay, a dampness over all while we retreat in rainfall. Then the sun will come and the waters recede as we reclaim our lives again. Down the hill is home and the people I love.

978-1-933964-30-0 (hard cover) 240 pgs. $22.00

978-1-933964-31-7 (perfect bound) 240 pgs. $16.00

THE BONDS OF WORK

“We’ll get the job done,”
I tell my daughter on the phone
and hear my father’s voice, all his life
turning work to love and honor.
“We’ll get the job done”—not perfection
but carry through, and I recall
the long hours of getting his tools
holding flashlights while he lay
on cardboard beneath the car
fixing brakes and starters, changing oil
because he could, because we
needed milk and bread.

When married, he’d help us move
each time not stopping till the beds
were up in each bedroom—his hands
red from lifting, turning wrenches
on appliances, thinking his way through.
And he’d follow our U-Haul back,
return with me and sandwiches,
my wife making the kids’ beds,
Mom serving coffee in paper cups,
only then could we sit and rest.

I give back now this work
for my children grown and wed,
helping them know their grandfather’s
love by the work he bred.

       Faces and Voices: Tales

by Larry Smith

    “What’s the story?” That’s what he used to say, my old man. As he entered our room, Monopoly game spread out, records playing loud, “Okay, what’s the story here?” We thought it was pretty obvious, but we knew too that he’d been talking with Mom, hearing her complain about “this shiftless bunch.” We never had any answer, never really knew what that meant—“the story.” What was that—a lie, the secret, the way things happened, what they all meant? What we’d do is make up some excuse for what we must have done wrong. Sometimes he would offer hints: “What’s the story on the grass cutting, boys?”
    “Oh, yeah, Dad, it was kinda raining all morning, and then we had to run to the store down town to get the ground meat for the spaghetti sauce.”
    David might jump in, “This afternoon we studied the catechism for Reverend Taylor’s class. You know we’re joining the church next Sunday.” Great touch.
    “Okay,” Dad would say, walking away. “Just get it done before Sunday.”
   
    I started thinking of it at night, lying in bed awake hearing David snore. There were all these kinds of stories. Each of us could tell many from one incident—how the window got broken, how the dog got loose, where the socket wrench set got to. And my story would only be part of it even for me. We edit as we speak, you know. Tomorrow I’d tell a different story, and none of it would be lies, and all of it would. . . .

INSIDE THE NOISE

Yes, there were coal mines, and steel mills, and factories. All of them grinding away at the edge of things–thin shudder of the earth that we lived with, echoing roar of river inside the hills. 

 It grew inside us.

 It was the sound of a furnace under the floor shaking the boards at our feet. Men and women who worked long in it dissolved to deafness, began to speak with hands. Those who lived along its edge learned to turn away.

 Birds stood on fence posts, without any necks,  or flitted close to the ground. 
 Open any window, close any door, it was there,  a slow and steady rain that fell over everything. It was a death rattle there in our chest, and our lives were clothes hanging out on the line without rest.

 Everyone knew but no one spoke.

Beyond Rust Stories by Larry Smith A novella set in industrial Lorain, Ohio, four personal esays, and six short stories set in industrial Ohio River Valley. "I like Beyond Rust and find it very affecting—Good, strong language and a big heart shining through." -Sy Safransky, ed. Sun Magazine 156 pgs. 9780933087392

STEEL VALLEY:
POSTCARDS AND LETTERS
[Pig Iron Press 1992]

(letter poems)

Letter from FRANCO--WHEELING, 1920 

Rosa, the people here grow grass 
instead of tomoatoes--Americans,
they got the hair without the brains.
I am living with friends in a room
mostly working and sleeping.
Also I have a little garden
between the railroad and the river.
I salt the soil with my sweat,
and listen to the music in the water.
I sit on a rock at dusk,
think of a dark eyed girl
who is brushing her hair
in a nightgown before a mirror.
Maybe a goat rattles its bell
in the yard, and she looks out
to the east.  When I look up

so gently it is raining.

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