River Hymnal

“The very best of our natural world informs every line of Cody Smith’s River Hymnal. Wood ducks, still waters, expansive fields off riverbanks, baseball diamonds—These images float in the air like smoke from a fine cigar long after the poems are put down.”—Jack B. Bedell, 2017-2019 Louisiana Poet Laureate

“Oh, the holiness of rivers, of poems deep into rivers, of these poems by Cody Smith—I read them along the Metolius, along the Marys, I read them looking not for answers but for the best questions. Here’s another man reckoning fatherhood and class and inheritance, another man in love with his children and his wife and the good, hard, going-away days.”—Joe Wilkins, author of Thieve and When We Were Birds