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All,</div>
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Please find below and attached Jack Ridl's review of Ron Smith's <i>That Beauty of the Trees.</i></div>
<p class="elementToProof" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;"><i>That Beauty in the Trees</i>, Ron Smith, LSU Press, 2023 </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Reviewed by Jack Ridl </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Don’t bother reading this review, just go read masterful poet Ron Smith’s That </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Beauty in the Trees. And what is that “that”? </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Ron Smith is subtle, nuanced, clearly ambiguous, rich in layers of implication. His </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">poems don’t talk to you. They lead you into a world where you participate and </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">wonder. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Reviews often attempt to make up your mind for you or draw attention to the </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">intelligence of the reviewer. Or they reveal the reviewer’s insights for a resume: </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">tenure’s on the line. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Do something more important than the impotent notion that evaluation makes a </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">difference. W. H. Audin retracted his ridiculous and yet still perpetrated line, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">“Poetry makes nothing happen..” Set aside your educated notion of the importance </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">of critical evaluation, and something will happen. Bring your vulnerability and </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">attentiveness, and something valuable will happen. And in this discordant time </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">when language is used to mislead, twist intention, cause cruelty, annihilate </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">reputations, misdirect, impose nihilistic solutions, grant permission to unleash </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">hatred, poems and most certainly Ron Smith’s poems can save moments within our </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">lived lives. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Should I end there? Sure. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">I know I should support such exclamations even though I’d prefer to let the work </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">do that, and I’ll go walk our dog. First of all, Smith (Can I call him Ron for </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Aethlon readers? Sure.) First of all, Ron’s book of poems is varied, covering a broad range of subjects. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Ron dares to violate the preeminent ideas held in a hammerlock </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">that a collection of poems should “hold together,” be thematic, have a structural </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">coherence, tonal consistency, and recognizable voice, (Whatever that is.) one made </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">familiar by the fourth poem, one that remains familiar until we’re asleep. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Because this review is for Aethlon readers, I’ll offer some poems where Ron works </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">with sports. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">In “Rizal Stadium, World War II” (p. 24) he creates a convincing fusion of baseball, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">killing, the body strewn landscape of war, the speaker’s ability to take “bad hops in </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">the heart then firing a/frozen rope (yes) frozen rope to first,” his “father who’s right </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">now fighting/ for his life on Guadalcanal,” Rod Serling, Episode 19 of The </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Twilight Zone,” sudden commentary, and more to create the reality of innocence </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">and horror that was then and, when we reflect, is now. Ron makes it seamless, and </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">seamless it becomes for us no matter how accomplished we are at </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">compartmentalizing. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">This is one of the great accomplishments throughout the collection: to refrain from </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">isolating experiences and instead give us the “blenderized” world we live within. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Read “Birth of Modern Poetry” (p. 88). Every line turns at the right moment; the </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">poem “flows” in the voices of Pound and Williams and you’ll laugh and wonder if </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Ron means it, and wonder about modern poetry itself and notice Ron’s mastery of </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">free verse while he parodies it, or does he? And it’s a multi-persona poem where </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Ron, or is it Ron? steps in. Every line begins at the left edge: how formal and </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">controlled and common. You now and then stop at moments such as when WCW, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">talking about Hemingway and Pound going at it— “ ‘Pound [falling] back upon his </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">settee.’/1922. the year of litrachur’s nuclear atrocities, Hem wrote/ that Ez led ‘wit </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">his chin’ and had the general grace/ of a crayfish,’ whatever that means.” </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Then after the delight of that “formally free verse” Laurel and Hardy perceptive </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">fiasco you note a poem where the subject offers a revelation in varied line stanzas, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">a poem tapestried into various juxtapositions that bring a fresh perspective in </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">fragments, short lines, long lines, single lines, couplets, varied in position on the </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">page, syncopated in rhythm. For example— </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">“Riefenstahl” (p. 56) Hitler’s Olympics film maker where we read </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">“and less </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">bat- </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">tired, brushed </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">by tender woodwinds, faces, fluent bodies </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">mist enfolded, invested, draped, touch them, smooth them, </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">as the camera turns </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">them </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">into </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">gesture . . .” </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Images? Well, in one poem there’s “anchovy sauce, fried artichokes, and gusts of </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">garlic,” then in another you’re with Willyum Wumpus, then on Omaha Beach, in </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Plato’s cave, Rome, Assisi, or the marsh water of Savannah. You’ll meet up with </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Mussolini, Keats, Casanova, Jesus, George Washington. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Attend to three poems a day. Three. The poems welcome your participation and </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">rewards your imagination and intellect and delight and sorrowful remembrance. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Spoiler alert, I’m giving away the ending— </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">“that we must say, we do say, we will </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">always </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">say is a kind </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">of beauty.” </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Jack Ridl, author of Practicing to Walk Like a Heron (Wayne State University </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Press), co-recipient of ForeWord Review”s award for the year’s best collection of </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;" class="elementToProof"><span style="letter-spacing: normal; font-family: "Calibri", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; color: black;">poetry </span></p>
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