As both poet and novelist, Charlie Smith has been hailed as one of the most original voices on the literary scene today. The New York Times calls him "prodigiously talented," and Madison Smartt Bell describes him as "a visionary." This, his fourth volume, is his most powerful collection to date. Before and After is a book of family poems. In the poet's own words: "They are a kind of affidavit. A sworn statement concerning events and consequences in the lives of a small group of bound together people. They repeat certain motifs, certain facts, as the mind does coming to grips with what haunts it. They hint of a golden time, a time lost, replaced by disaster, decay. Of being borne down by the disaster, of coming out of it, of going on.". Charlie Smith captures the intimate life of one family - in all its courage, deceit, misery, madness, love, revelation, and rage - and transforms it to record the life of the American family.