"Arthur Smith writes at the intersection of Main Street and the Milky Way, the physical and the spiritual world, in this book of experience, of sorrows recognized and paradise remembered, 'All that sugar coaxed out of clay.'  We are lucky to have this book that matters, The Fortunate Era." -- Edward Hirsch

"These poems are made of both familiar and elegantly spinning insight, real as rock. The flames bank and re-flare, but what Smith is shoring up for us in the ruins is the pure lyrical restraint of master: these poems re-make the way we see the world, right down to each fiery particle."   -- Carol Muske-Dukes 

“Everything is endangered here: the earth and its species, the self with its knowledge that we know nothing, that what we love most can be, and will be, easily and brutally lost.  And yet, in spite of this, or perhaps because of it, there is the fierce will to live.  These poems sing and sere, stare clear-eyed into the sun.  Finishing this book, one comes away feeling rinsed clean.”   -- Susan Wood

“Smith’s life’s work has been a quest for earthly insights into transcendent visions, and he writes as though he were a gentler version of Dante’s Minos, making stoical judgments over moments of his own life, consigning them to placements in hell, purgatory, and up to the brink of heaven.  He’s looked inside and felt the daily terror, yet within that terror, a new life.”  --  Garrett Hongo