Bruce Smith’s new poems move fast and travel far, from Newtonian physics to the “fiery . . . riderless horse” of Christian apocalypse, “from the jet engine / as it gins the clouds” to “the hand-iron press and the sewing machine.” Most of those poems, though, begin in one place: a notion of blue-collar manhood, full of rough edges, frustration, defiance and pride. Smith’s Vietnam-era draftees, present-day stevedores, touring musicians and Iraq war veterans, along with their “black, white, sallow, olive, red, black kids,” inspire grand flights, tumultuous catalogs, as in a poem about drought: “Wherever there was water — the upended lid of a mayonnaise jar / in the gutter, the gutter, the sober silver puddle, the frenzied lake, / the tear ducts, the dew, the beveled rain — we drank.” When Smith is not speeding through such cascades of nouns, he revs up other repetitions: “They come like rats. . . . They want to save you. They want to slap you silly. They pet / the kitty. They bring gossip. . . . They’ve got questions for further study.” The plural noun to which each “They” refers is an obscenity most poets would not use.