Instant New York Times Bestseller

Winner, 2024 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award

Finalist, 2024 NAACP Image Awards

Finalist, 2024 Southern Book Prize

A remarkable new poetry collection from Clint Smith, the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Critics Circle award-winning author of How the Word Is Passed.

Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult. Above Ground wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body. Smith’s lyrical, narrative poems bring the reader on a journey not only through the early years of his children’s lives, but through the changing world in which they are growing up—through the changing world of which we are all a part.

Above Ground is a breathtaking collection that follows Smith's first award-winning book of poetry, Counting Descent.

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Praise for ABOVE GROUND

“When poet and Atlantic staff writer Clint Smith became a dad, it changed how he saw the world. With his second book of poetry, the father of two attempts to put all of his complicated feelings surrounding parenthood into perspective. Whether it be the utter joy of watching his children make new discoveries or the heartbreak of knowing you can’t always protect your little ones from social injustice, the author of How the Word Is Passed doesn’t sugarcoat the emotional rollercoaster that most parents are on. Above Ground is a beautiful meditation not only on Smith’s own journey as a dad, but also on the effect our ever-changing world has on the way we raise our children.” – TIME 

“Ultimately these poems point to our ability to trust in the face of this volatility. Trust that your unborn baby's heart is in fact beating, even if you cannot hear it. Trust that the sunset is a vision of beauty, even if you haven't stopped to look at it. Trust that the world will still be here when your children grow up, even though it seems to be burning right now. In one poem Smith writes — ‘I fear everything I control / and know I control nothing’ — reminding himself that trust is sometimes the only way forward.” –NPR

"Clint Smith captivated thousands with his monumental bestseller How the Word Is Passed, one of the best books of the past two years...In 2023, he’s back, this time with a poetry collection intimately parsing parenthood, legacy, and lineage."–Elle

“I think there is an emergent theory, and maybe also a demand, when Clint Smith considers the brutalizing facts and language of war almost alongside a reverie about sprinkling sand on his baby’s feet; when he mourns the long and brutal and ongoing history of American slavery almost alongside making French toast with the kids or dancing until the whole family falls down.  When he makes us witness the most incomprehensibly awful (and daily) brutalities not only beside but almost in tandem with the most incomprehensibly tender (and daily) actions of care.  It’s a theory, and a demand, to which I think we must pay very close attention.” – Ross Gay, author of Inciting Joy

“This is a beautiful, vivid book, where ‘grandfather is a fist / full of embers’ and a dance party becomes a life-giving ceremony, and Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away, is a reason enough to spark [a] love note. Much to love in this poetry collection, lyric keeping us above the ground, rooted into our world, blessed to be alive, despite it all. Clint Smith is a marvelous poet.” – Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

“I’m so grateful that Clint Smith’s poems remind us of our interdependence on each other—on chrysanthemums, jellyfish, plankton, to note just a few of his magnificent poetic negotiations—all while turning his wide and generous eyes to fatherhood. This book is an illumination I sorely needed of both the outdoors and the quotidian—a joyful embrace and legacy of bright language and poignant questions.”– Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders

“Clint Smith’s poems make palpable the soap-bubble thinness of borders—the contingent boundaries of love and loss, past and present, sanctuary and violence, ‘us’ and ‘them.’ With inextinguishable generosity and abundant wisdom, he shows us the linkages that both bind and divide us—as family, as community, as nation, as world: ‘The river that gives us water to drink is the same one that might wash us away.’ I am so grateful for these luminous poems.” – Monica Youn, author of Blackacre

“Above Ground gives us one of our most urgent writers at the height of his powers. With these poems, Smith’s crystalline lyric illuminates every word with love’s deep regard. It’s so nourishing, the scope and hope and breadth of Smith’s tenderness. I recommend this book for everyone who has ever been a parent or a child, in love or beloved. I recommend it to everyone who has ever felt like a stranger inside of history, inside of a nation, or inside their own heart.” – Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr! and Pilgrim Bell

“A gorgeous book...Smith’s pivots and pacing mirror the routes of our lives, and his gentle, attentive poems are downright sacramental....I appreciate poets like Smith who turn the page between hope and loss, fear and exuberance.” – The Millions

“In addition to being a brilliant writer of nonfiction, he is a brilliant poet. His newest collection explores fatherhood and all the ways that it has changed how he moves through the world. These poems delve into the heartbreak and pain of raising children in a broken world, as well as the moments of transcendent joy that come with parenthood.” – Book Riot

“A beautiful collection of poetry…The poems explore the ways in which your view the world changes after becoming a parent, and all that is equally beautiful and terrifying about the job.” – The Root

“Clint Smith is back with a gorgeous collection of poetry exploring fatherhood. The Harvard grad interrogates how parenthood shapes the lives of both the parents and the children, and he wrestles with the ways history, social and political events affect raising children. A constantly changing world can be hard to grasp as an individual, but one of our most prolific writers gives us language through his lyrical prose.” – WBUR/NPR Boston