With the first line of her first poem, Smith takes us into the world where her stories take place: the forest. She leads us in with a girl straying off the path, and from there “the forest opens for her”. She continues to transport us deeper and deeper in over the course of her first poem “Vanishing Point” until we are lost in the forest, “swallowed whole by trees, eaten alive in manner / of speaking.” Smith’s forest is not kind; it is fraught with danger, filled with beasts and birds and unknown perils. In this forest it is impossible to tell monsters from men and there are things that will hunt “the heart hot from your body.” (“The Fortune Teller to the Woodsman”). This forest is brutal and violent, and as you continue to wander around, encountering
