 Writers and musicians have explored the concept of duende, which might in English translate to a kind of existential blues.Smith is not interested in sadness, per se.Rather, in the strange music of these poems I think Smith is trying to walk us close to the edge of death-in-life, the force of hovering death in both the personal and social realms, admitting its inevitability and sometimes-proximity, and understand its manifestations in quotidian acts.