Duende: Poems

Duende: Poems by Tracy K. Smith,  87 pages.

Smith's second book of poems, for which she won the 2006 James Laughlin Award. This award is given to commend and support a poets second book of poetry. Given that Smith's first book of poems. The Body's Question won the Whiting Writers Award and that her 2011 collection, Life on Mars, won the Pulitzer, and given that these are excellent poems, the judges for the Laughlin Award, their rather narrow focus aside, made an excellent choice.
Smith's poems are softly focused on loss and betrayal and let slip their subjects hurt and sometimes a  smoldering rage:

Now That the World Has Turned:

Nothing disappears. Only hovers and thins.

Whoever we were months ago is colder.

Someone writes to say I bear down upon him

Like a wet coat. Just these lines.