“For pure, raw power of language, nobody in his generation comes close to Charlie Smith.”—David Bottoms Drawing on nine previous collections and including nearly fifty new poems, Charlie Smith’s I Am Your Lifeguard marks the return of one of our most honest and unorthodox poets. The poems in this collection expose jagged truth: some are love letters; some focus our attention on beauty we may have otherwise missed, stepped over, or cast aside; some tell us secrets we may want to carry in a locket; some are X–ray readings of our hearts; some are laugh–out–loud funny; some are quiet revelations. Above all, these poems are expansively, radically compassionate. I Am Your Lifeguard is prophetic and prescient, exquisitely descriptive of what it means to be human, and astonishingly attentive to beauty found even in the most derelict places. This collection is a stunning retrospective from an award–winning writer of “scalding aortal brilliance” ( New York Times Book Review ).