"John Warner Smith's second collection of poems, Soul Be A Witness, is a surprisingly agile book. It moves through time and space with its storytelling, its playful tease, compelling situations and statements on life, and its vivid imagery and language. Smith has created a poetic ritual which maps a progression towards manhood and sense of self, with cultural and familial histories which are the cornerstones of African American existence ... a warrior rite of passage that is being revealed, but there is tenderness and beauty ... Smith's objective distance, and understatement, is more beautifully effective than a rant ... captures the nuances of a place John Warner Smith knows very well, very well indeed." -- review from Gary Copeland Lilley, back cover.
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