Counting Descent

Clint Smith is an African American poet, writer, and journalist. His published books include Counting Descent (Write Bloody Publishing, 2016), How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown and Company, 2021), and Above Ground (Little, Brown and Company, 2023). Smith has received a number of awards and fellowships from Cave Canem, the National Science Foundation, the Art for Justice Fund, and the National Book Critics Circle, among others. Critics have praised Smith for his incisive curiosity and his ability to move fluidly between the personal and the political. Across genres, his work is concerned with contemporary African American life, from the effects of oppression on daily life to the struggle against these systems. His creative writing brings out the powerful emotional content of these experiences, such as joy, pain, and deep meaning.

“Counting Descent” is the title poem of Smith’s debut collection of poetry. Like many of the poems in the collection, “Counting Descent” is concerned with the speaker’s lineage and legacy. Writer Kiese Laymon called Counting Descent “more than brilliant. More than lyrical. More than bluesy. More than courageous. It is terrifying in its ability to at once not hide and show readers why it wants to hide so badly.