Counting Descent

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2016

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Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Related Poems

“A Small Needful Fact” by Ross Gay (2015)

Ross Gay responds to violence against African Americans. He explicitly names Eric Garner here and maintains his focus on the individual. Like Smith, Gay’s speaker is concerned with breath, life, and how the past shapes the future.

“Pangaea” by Clint Smith (2017)

This poem was originally published in the Rumpus. The speaker of this poem meditates on the supercontinent Pangaea and its split approximately 200 million years ago. Both the speakers in “Pangaea” and “Counting Descent” find ways to connect the past to the present. In this poem, the speaker mourns the distance between him and others as a result of the oceans between continents. He compares it to the silence in his daily life, both literal and metaphorical, after a bomb in Pakistan killed dozens of people “[j]ust the / other day” (Lines 14-15).

“the drone” by Clint Smith (2018)

This poem was published in the October 2018 issue of Poetry magazine. It is a significant formal departure from “Counting Descent.” This block poem features somewhat regular caesuras, a total lack of punctuation, and shorter, more fragmented phrases:

“the drone was once a scrap of metal the drone looks as it if might be a toy the drone is not a toy the drone could have been something other than a killing machine the drone could have been a house” (Lines 1-3)

Like “Counting Descent,” this poem brings a variety of topics together. In “Counting Descent,” the subjects are connected across time, and in this poem, they’re connected by word association.

“Ode to Gossips” by Safia Elhillo (2018)

Safia Elhillo is a friend and contemporary of Clint Smith’s. “Ode to Gossips” appeared in the December 2018 issue of Poetry magazine—two months after Smith published a poem in the same magazine. This poem shares themes of family legacy and pride with “Counting Descent,” although the family dynamic is a bit more complicated for Elhillo’s speaker.

Further Literary Resources

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith (2021)

How the Word is Passed is Smith’s debut book of nonfiction. Smith travels throughout the United States, visiting monuments and heritage sites to examine the way the history of slavery is taught in the contemporary United States. This book, like much of Smith’s work, relays a deeply personal narrative. The author recounts his experiences and reflections with a thoughtful first-person perspective.

Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route by Saidiya V. Hartman (2008)

Lose Your Mother is a book of narrative nonfiction by American writer and academic Saidiya Hartman. It follows the author as she investigates the legacy of slavery and its impact on her own ancestors. Hartman coined the term “afterlife of slavery,” defined here as “skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment” (6). As with Smith in “Counting Descent,” Hartman’s personal narrative becomes part of a broader conversation about family legacies and contemporary social issues.

“The Joy of Morocco” by Clint Smith (2022)

Clint Smith was one of several staff writers who covered the 2022 World Cup for the Atlantic in their specialized newsletter, The Great Game. Two days after Morocco lost to France in the semifinals, Smith reflects on Morocco’s unprecedented success in the tournament, utilizing his poetic eye in this piece of prose journalism. He focuses on a video of Sofiane Boufal, a Moroccan player, dancing on the field with his mother after his team beat Portugal in their quarterfinal match. Smith describes this intimate postgame moment in loving detail, capturing the joy of the moment with lyrical prose. In Smith’s telling, Boufal “bends his body down so that he meets her at eye level, and smiles the way a son does when he knows he’s made his mother proud.”

“Clint Smith on Protest, Art, and Protest-Art” by Peter Mishler (2017)

This interview was the first installment in Literary Hub’s monthly series, Poets on Their Craft and Writing Lives. Smith discusses his artistic philosophy and influences, as well as the cultural and personal context that informed his first poetry collection. Smith describes Counting Descent as “me wrestling with questions I admittedly don’t have the answers to, and possibly never will.”