Scope and Contents

This is a photocopy of the manuscript of Plain Talk. The Sackner Archive holds two versions of this work. Smith describes the book as "Epigrams, Epitaphs, Satires, Nonsense, Occasional Concrete & Quotidian Poems." This work that was acquired from a North Carolina bookseller prompted the Sackner's interest in Smith's poetry. William Jay Smith did not know how this copy came into the hands of the bookseller. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

This is a photocopy of the manuscript for Plain Talk. The Sackner Archive holds two versions of this work. Smith describes the book as "Epigrams, Epitaphs, Satires, Nonsense, Occasional Concrete & Quotidian Poems." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

Book is dedicated to Ruth and Marvin Sackner. The bookbinding was made by Richard Minsky who also treated the paper of the book with Wei T'o spray for neutralizing against acids as explained on the cover text. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

The book is dedicated to Ruth and Marvin Sackner. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

The book is dedicated to Ruth and Marvin Sackner. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

Jacques Hnizdovsky provided woodcut illustrations. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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New Year's greetings. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

Each page depicts single poem. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

This is the first draft of the poem that eventually became a larger conventional poem that was published in, "Laughting Time" (1980), a book also held by the Sackner Archive. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents These poems relate the story of the trail of tears suffered by the American Indians on their forced removal to reservations. The book cover is from an engraving by the French artist Albert Dupont that first apperaed in Smith's book, Le Sentier (The Trail). From Booklist: "Smith's sequence of moving, extraordinarily visual poems brings us to the heart of one of the nation's greatest tragedies and, many say, sins--the "removal" of the five civilized tribes, via the Trail of Tears, from their homelands in the eastern U.S. to the Oklahoma territory. Part Choctaw himself, Smith uses several different voices in the sequence, such as those of an old Choctaw on the trail, remembering the "buzzard man" who presided over funeral rites, while mourning the many who died without such appropriate ritual; the great Choctaw chief, Pushmataha, who traveled to Washington in a failed attempt to gain a hearing for his people; and artist Charles Banks Wilson, sketching the last of the purebloods in...

Scope and Contents

Smith calls this volume "a sequence of poetry" that is related to the history of the American Indians and their forced relocation from their traditional lands to Western reservations. Albert Dupont contributes a cover engraving and black and white illustration that first appeared in Le Sentier by Smith. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

The wood engraving illustrations are by John De Pol. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.