"Bruce Smith’s new poems move fast and travel far. . . . Most books of new poems are either too long or leave readers wanting more. Devotions does neither; it is ample as well as ambitious, agile and unpredictable as well as viscerally affecting. For all that its born-to-run characters yearn for escape, it’s a book to stay inside; it’s exhausting to read, and yet it’s a book to get lost in, one you won’t exhaust any time soon."

Stephen Burt | New York Times Book Review

"Smith’s devotions are authoritative and capacious. Neither querulous nor slavish, they give pleasure, which is what we ask of them."

Library Journal

"In poems alternately sharp, slippery, and tender, Smith finds a way to take in almost everything—’Shooter Protocol,’ Charlie Parker, high school shop class—moving seamlessly between critique and embrace. Smith’s been closely watched for several books now, and this may be his best collection yet."

Publishers Weekly

"Devotions reads like a series of protean Ars Poeticas. The poems glow with ghost rhymes, hypnotic catalogues, and lyric enchantments that constitute ’a blues about the rules for distance and difficult love.’ Bruce Smith is a poet I always read with awe and hunger. This amazing new book overwhelms me in the best possible ways."

Terrance Hayes, author of Lighthead , winner of the National Book Award