Carmen Giménez Smith will be the next guest for the Life of a Poet

I sat down to read “Be Recorder,” the new collection by Carmen Giménez Smith, and put a little sticky note on each poem that knocked me out. But it was a waste of sticky notes because they all knocked me out.

The daughter of South American immigrants who were proud to be working hard in America, Smith explores her Latina identity in the context of this country’s rising xenophobia. She can be sardonic, insightful and worried all in the same line — and she’s never afraid to express her anger. “This girl becomes a poet,” she writes, “brilliant and mean.”