Counting Descent
Counting Descent is the first book of poetry from Clint Smith, who later wrote the prose history How the Word Is Passed. Published in 2016, the collection works through Black boyhood and manhood in New Orleans and beyond, alongside love poems to parents and grandparents and elegies that respond to the killings of Black Americans by police. Smith writes with a teacher's clarity. He came up through the slam and spoken word scenes, and many of the poems work well read aloud, but they hold up just as strongly on the page. The collection won the Black Caucus of the American Library Association's Best Poetry Book award and helped establish him as a strong voice in contemporary American poetry before his nonfiction work reached a wider audience.
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What you might want to know about Counting Descent
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Clint Smith's debut poetry collection on Black boyhood, family, and the daily weight of American history.
It is by the same author and shares overlapping concerns, but this is a poetry collection rather than narrative nonfiction.
Yes. Smith's voice is clear and grounded in story, with roots in spoken word.
Counting Descent was written by Clint Smith, published in 2016 by Write Bloody Publishing.
Counting Descent is 82 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Counting Descent takes most readers 1 to 2 hours to finish.
Counting Descent is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.