Stop Lying

Simultaneously campy and serious, Aaron Smith's poems capture his experiences and perspective as a gay man. Stop Lying, his fifth collection, is perhaps his best yet — a tender and nuanced revisiting of his relationship with his dying mother, especially his complicated response to her lifelong rejection of his queerness.   Recommended By Adam P., Powells.com

Stop Lying is Aaron Smith's most personal and vulnerable work yet. Revolving around the death of Smith's mother and how the poet, 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.