Daniel Smith's Ancestral draws from the thirty years he farmed his family's dairy farm in northwestern Illinois. With poetry grounded in the rural Midwest, Ancestral explores a family's deep attachment to the land, the physical work of farming and the emotional disruption one endures when such a lif...

Daniel Smith's Ancestral draws from the thirty years he farmed his family's dairy farm in northwestern Illinois. With poetry grounded in the rural Midwest, Ancestral explores a family's deep attachment to the land, the physical work of farming and the emotional disruption one endures when such a life is no longer sustainable. These poems provide a powerful depiction of the changes impacting agriculture and our rural communities.