In SLDM: Sutra of August Insects: Thirty New Poems, Smith draws upon his years as a therapist helping others with grief and loss, and celebrating the resiliency of the human spirit. In writing post card poems one a day for 56 days in 2014, at the invitation of a fellow beekeeper in France, Smith finds a balanced narrative bringing a disparate collection of stories about an abandoned seaside garden, its deceased owner, the sole visitor a postman and the insects left behind, and the loss of Robin Williams to alleged suicide and the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri that August 2014. In the numinous detail of these two events, Smith the beekeeper welds a story of wise insects, peppers the verse with a dead language (Latin), and puts forth an engaging story line. Readers will not be disappointed in these poems, Smith’s first publication in fourteen years.
Daniel L. Smith, poet 