Here, we see the circularity, not only of the pieces but also of Smith as an artist — the sense of purpose, of ambition even, mixed with her sense of the holiness of the task. “[T]here are precious words to grind,” she notes, as if literature were a physical practice, and throughout these pages, we get the impression of this work as, somehow, made by hand. “Relaxed, beneath the sky, contemplating this and that,” she writes in “Cowboy Truths,” dedicated to onetime boyfriend Sam Shepard. “The nature of labor. The nature of idleness and the sky itself with billowing masses so close one might lasso a cloud to pillow one’s head or fill one’s belly. Sopping up the beans and gravy with a chunk of cloud meat and lying back for a little siesta. What a life!” More here.