Wade in the Water: Poems

I'm relatively new to reading contemporary poetry, and am still learning what works for me personally, and what doesn't. I spent a long time reading and re-reading the poems from this collection, hoping it would eventually click, but something about it felt removed, closed off, and I can't say it resonated with me much overall. There are a lot of different and interesting themes and topics, but I couldn't help feeling I'd prefer to read them in a different form. The few poems that I liked more were ‘Deadly' (on Creation and destruction), ‘Ash' (a personified haunted house), and the few domestic poems towards the end, such as ‘4½' (about being woken by your child in the early morning) and ‘The Everlasting Self' (about a dog shaking water from itself). The historical poems, mainly on the aftermath of the American civil war, make up the bulk of the collection, and although I was interested in the topic itself, the poems themselves seemed to smother the subject. I wanted those stories to be told in another way. All in all, Smith's style was clearly not a good fit for me, but I'm glad I took the chance to try something new.