Stop Lying: Poems

Stop Lying is Aaron Smith’s most personal and vulnerable work yet. Revolving around the death of the poet’s mother and how Smith, a gay man, faces his upbringing where his sexuality was viewed as sinful and unnatural, these poems plumb the complexities of what families say and choose not to say. How does one grieve when a relationship will forever remain unresolved? What does it mean to both regret and not regret one’s decisions? What if survival doesn’t look like what we’re told it should? This is the story of a poet pushing through present-day grief and the shame of the past to find the buried truths, the ones that are hardest to tell. AFTERLIFE Sometimes the hardest part is wondering if my mother died believing I would go to hell

Aaron Smith is the author of four books with the Pitt Poetry Series: The Book of Daniel, Primer, Appetite, and Blue on Blue Ground, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. His work has appeared in numerous publications including the Baffler, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and Best American Poetry.