And in this awful year, thats something worth giving thanks for. Its a dire poem, tinged with hope, that out of the destruction of our century something new and fresh might reemerge. And I remember, I was sitting reading this document, and suddenly I got to the region where all of these complaints against England were being raised, and I felt that they were speaking so clearly to the history of black life in this country, and suddenly everything else that I was working on, that I thought I wanted to gather around the idea of Jefferson, just went away. I dont think the poems lay out answers to any of that, incidentally, but their manner of exploring these questions feels fruitful.WASHINGTON SQUARE: One of the most striking pieces in the book is the long poem you mentioned, I Will Tell You the Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About It. Im curious about the research that goes into a piece like thishow did you come across the source documents, and when did you realize they could constitute a poem? The gesture of writing an appeal and appending ones name to it parallels her lyric recuperations, because both replace capitalisms terms (where individuals are parts of a vast machine dedicated to profit) with the changeable conditions of authentic selfhood, where every breath matters even if it produces nothing that can be monetized. This is so brilliant, this is such a clear idea. The pedestrian sees himself one way hears his own music in those engines idling for him but who doesnt? And then I said well, why dont I just look at the Declaration of Independence and see what I can hear there? But I truly hope its more than that. And that stage, I want to think of it as a stage that America has gone through. Perhaps stepping into that subject matter imparted a courageor simply a vocabulary and an awarenessthat hasnt vanished. Meanwhile, Watershed brilliantly intermixes language from that Nathaniel Rich article with testimony by survivors of near-death experiences; was the process of choosing and assembling your found texts similar for this poem? I think the topic has also just come up much more frequently and relentlessly in the years since Trayvon Martins murder.WASHINGTON SQUARE: Another subject you grapple with in Ordinary Light is belief in God. Poems are so great because they urge you to start thinking in honest and even vulnerable terms about your own life and your own experiences. Curtis Fox: And what about the desolate luxury? It teases us; it helps us sometimes, so that what is happening now feels like it has already occurred once before; it bridles adults and happily submits to being largely ignored by children. How did the book come together and find its shape? I wanted to draw-in the sense of the living spirit at the heart of that nights encounter, and at the heart of the tradition of the ring shout itself: the sense of love and deliverance, of faith and compassion, of justice and survival.Watershed was a poem I knew I wanted to write. My poems strain for the kind of freedom to rise above Time on occasion, to see through it, to make use of what once (when I needed it) might have been invisible to me and what now (after the fact) can seem plain. Its actually the last poem in your book. Wade in the Water, by Tracy K. SmithGraywolf Press, 2018. Tracy K. Smith: Yeah, the sense of dark possibility rose to the surface. I love the things my students are willing to learn, and the risks they are willing to take with their poems. The final poem, An Old Story, exposes our tendency to destroy our own world by reminding us of the Biblical storm that drowned all life except for Noah, his family, and the pairs of animals he saved on his ark: After the storm, it is song that changes the weather, tempts the animals to come down from the trees where they had shelteredin an ark made of wood but not by us. WebTracy K. Smith is a contemporary American poet who is born in Massachusetts. Her work travels the world and takes on its voices; brings history and You can read some of her poems on our website. Whatwhat on earthconstitutes a meaningful life in a market society?Markets shape mindsets. She lives with her husband in Chicago. For I also thought when this poem first came to me, this is what poetry is for, this is what poetry can do. His arms churn the air. WASHINGTON SQUARE: In Ordinary Light you recall your first poem, written in grade school and titled Humor. These days much of your work deals with weighty topics, though youve said in other interviews that writing often feels joyful. Tracy K. Smith: Yeah, I think in some ways this is kind of a coming of age poem. I will say it flat-out: I do not like poetry. Attention to the stranger crossing any road in any town or city; patience with the awkward encounter, the unknown intention; respect for the other whom you do not know, but with a slightest stretch of mind, imagine you do. 1 No. In a quiet way, I am editing from the moment I begin writing, pushing myself to think more rigorously and vigorously and to live up to the model of discipline and courage that I encourage my students to embrace.WASHINGTON SQUARE: Youve written four poetry collections; when you started writing, you were a student, and now youre a teachernot to mention the nations Poet Laureate. Smith received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her third book of poems, Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011). The point of capitalism is to get more capital, which allows you to either procure stuff (things or experiences) or just hoard the lucre, deriving a weird pleasure from that. In June 2017, Smith was named U.S. poet laureate. We'll love you just the way you are if you're perfect. Onto the darkening dusk. Ive been sharing work by other American poets, and readings of my own poems as well, and just asking a very simple question, which is, what do you notice? It comes down to simple math.The beach belongs to none of us, regardlessof color, or money. We thought the birds were singing louder. The shoulders. Life On Mars By Tracy K. Smith Analysis. Yet everyone lived with a sense of innocence and privacy. People are leading lives where they cannot afford rich and luxurious things and are ashamed of that, yet they also hold onto fear; they are afraid to let people see their actual status. So, when I was working on other poems in this book that were wrestling with history, I thought, oh, Ill go back to that Jefferson poem and see if I can make it right. Curtis Fox: This is Poetry Off The Shelf from The Poetry Foundation. I think this is a poem thats about, okay, Im just past that, and look what I can almost afford. He has From trees. Dang, you hear those birds? Also, one of the strangest I think, because the role of the Poet Laureate is largely defined by the poet occupying that perch. Can you explain exactly what that means in terms of what you did with the Declaration of Independence? Bank-balance math and counting days. She studied at Harvard University, where she joined the Dark Room Collective, a reading series for writers of color, created by Sharan Strange in 1988. 1 No. WebMy maker says this poem reminds him of the little groceries and bodegas of his onetime New York neighborhood. Inspired by a photograph taken during a Black Lives Matter protest after city police killed Alton Sterling, a black man, the poem imagines a confrontation between state power and another African American body. The poem, titled Garden of Eden begins with Smith acknowledging a profound longing for her Garden of Eden, or moreover her personal paradise. The conversations that can ensue after weve sat together listening to poems that have activated some of our own private urgencies, are useful. My thirties. Thats the emphasis in each of my workshops, though sometimes we use themes to determine the readings, or we look at a specific type of poemsay long poems or poem cyclesover the course of the term. How do you feel now about taking up race in your poetry? Her poem is an erasure poem, a form of found poetry, making it even more successful in her criticism of the original document. Her writing contests the deeply isolating structures of capitalism by imagining self and nation as a collaborative condition, one that must be endlessly reconstructed and defended in the face of xenophobia, sexual violence, economic ruin, social anomie, and political disintegration. Wade in the Water by Tracy K Smith is published by Penguin (8.99). destroyed the lives of our Even a simple poem like The Good Life grew large, for me at least,when the image of a woman journeying for water from a village without a well arrived. In this book, Im doing that more relentlessly. The author is efficient in pointing out that the men that once wrote and fought for equality, were the same to enforce and bring upon laws that oppressed In 2014 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship. I struggle a lot with interpreting metaphorical words often used by poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases. But if I do my job correctly, they slip away from that transparency and become something more than Id initially thought I was after. Was there a poem or group of poems it coalesced around?SMITH: Thank you. Tracy K. Smith, "Dusk" from Wade in the Water. Jesus also loved the foolish, the pushy, the stubborn, the fickle. I had the same problem choosing my poet. I think it is the shift in vocabulary that reads loudest in the books, and that is really a private attempt at finding something newly engaging in my usual conundrums.WASHINGTON SQUARE: You direct the undergraduate Creative Writing Program at Princeton University; though youre currently taking time off to focus on Laureate duties, youve taught and advised student poets for years. Tracy K. Smith: Mhmm, yeah. Men with interests to protect seduce and extract pleasure from a young person, making her believe / / It was she who gave permission, just as patriarchal industrial capitalism has plundered the youth of mother Earth.Those awful, awful men. The poet is having an ominous sense that this century is going to be quite something to handle, which turned out to be true. So the poems change for me too, which is I think affirmation that something real is happening. When capital is everything, queasy questions[1] bubble up: Is capitalism compatible with democracy? Our repeated I think now, of course, I feel, and many of us feel differently about that. (Jonathan Bachmans renowned shot shows two policemen in body armor arresting a woman named Ieshia Evans; the black-clad officers whip out their handcuffs for no discernible reason as Evans stands in silent dignity, wearing a long dress.). WebTracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, in 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. Some of these events have happened in large public spaces, so its been a matter of reading and then having maybe a public Q&A or more of a back and forth afterward. Her second collection is titled Duende, a Spanish word that eludes precise translation but denotes a quality of soulful artistic passion and inspiration; perhaps its this same quality that infuses her patiently lucid writing with visceral urgency, yielding lines that stick persistently in a readers heart and mind.Smith has written four poetry collections: The Body's Question, which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize; Duende, which received the James Laughlin Award; Life on Mars, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; and, most recently, Wade in the Water, published in April by Graywolf Press. Have your process and preoccupations changed? The way you can break into laughter remembering something while at a funeral, say, and Home the paper bags, doing We are not the isolated commodity seekers that capitalism and its armed enforcers demand we become, but rather all of us must be / / Buried deep within each other (Eternity). I know its a huge honor, and thats the first thing that I felt when Dr Hayden called me. From short lyrics to erasures to sectioned, multi-form elegies, all of Smiths work feels radically alivetraversing space and time; rife with cultural and historical references (to, for example, rock music; scientific research; classic movie scenes); and always illuminating with great care the complexities of consciousness and embodiment. His comic jogCarries him nowhere. I had been powerfully compelled and disturbed by a Nathaniel Rich article about chemical pollution that appeared in the New York Times Magazine in January 2016. 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