gal & fellow feedback

is this my Lady’s birth certificate? – foto Smith

These are unsolicited unpaid endorsements — I would have paid for them but I have no money. They are from fellow poets and friends, so that factors in.

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Dianne Borsenik:
I just received Steven Smith’s/Kathy Smith’s new book in the mail, and what a read! It’s an I-can’t-put-it-down-what-the-heck’s-gonna-happen-next kind of book. I’ve read a LOT of biographies and autobiographies, and this recounting is one of the most fascinating I’ve ever read, by far. I’m highly recommending it!

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John Burroughs:
Without hesitation or exaggeration, if I could buy only one book this year, Smith and Lady’s *Stations of the Lost and Found* would be it. I read an early draft of the book a couple of years ago and it knocked my shoes and socks off. I said then that I’d trade any of Kerouac’s or Bukowski’s volumes for it in a heartbeat. (And I hear this final version is even better.) Now the book so many of us have been looking forward to all this time is finally available. Get it now.

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Jack McGuane:
I got it, am reading it, three thumbs up

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Kelly Boyer Sagert: Was this book hard for you to write?

No, I must have story-teller blood in me because our initial kernel was 20 true short stories I’d already written about some of the wilder moments. I loved writing it with Lady, who by the way has to know more about her husband’s past than any wife alive, especially since she’s read some of my private journals from the 60s and 70s. BUT, what is interesting is now that it’s available to others’ eyes, I’m rereading it and I’m rather taken back at seeing how shallow and selfish and arrogant and weak I was. It wasn’t until I stopped drinking at the age of 45 twenty-one years ago that I slowly began to get a wee bit better at this life living thing.

Kelly Boyer Sagert: Takes courage to share your weaker moments. We often want to talk about the great stuff we’ve done, instead.

Ahhh, it’s ego and the writer disease . . . some of my best material that is the most fascinating to read and to write just happens to be when I’m not my most likable. Have to use the best stuff, even if it casts me in worse light.

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Lady posted her worries what the badness of my memoir might trigger in reality’s ripples. I just reread it and while it is often disconcerting, it is filled with humor and a desire for goodness. I frequently make myself look bad in my descriptions of my craziness, often come across as amazingly stupid. And the book turns out well in the end . . . it’s a good gone bad gone mostly good again story.

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