and settlement here. Its been great. That process involves weekly meetings where we are looking at and critiquing new poems, but also trying to listen to the themes and questions driving the work. SMITH: I think of my four books of poems in similar terms: The Bodys Question feels to me like a coming-of-age story. The ones / Whose wealth is a kind of filth. Lest this ecological connection seem like a stretch, know that environmental disaster haunts Wade in the Water. Someone has likened it to the poem in my previous book called The Good Life which is about being so hungry, and having a job but not making enough money. Dang, you hear those birds? Duende is a book that grapples with what it means to me to be an American. Curtis Fox: So thats the opening poem in your book, and as you said, its set in the early years of the century when the poet was more {innocence}, but there are hints that all is not well, and you write Everyone I knew was living / The same desolate luxury, / Each ashamed of the same things: / Innocence and privacy. She lives with her husband in Chicago. After all, it supposedly makes nothing happen, according to Auden (indeed, imagine a poem changing President Trumps mind on immigration), and it is the literary form for which capitalism has the least use, judging by its small contemporary readership.But poetry that tries to represent individual subjectivity is well positioned to depict life under capitalism and to render possible post- or anti-capitalist alternatives. She has taught at Princeton University and Harvard University. 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. Can you tell us a little bit about this poem before you read it? The shoulders. WebTracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Your work notably embraces questioningboth via interrogatives and through other formulations that reject single, easy truths (e.g., New Road Station names four things history metaphorically isnt, along with at least three that it perhaps might be). What do you try to impart as a teacher, and what, if anything, has teaching poetry taught you about writing it? Then I felt like the poem could finally get somewhere. / Pomegranate, persimmon, quince!), even though the ultimate act is to be a good consumer and buy things. 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. The last couplet, which read You are not the only one / Alive like that, lodged in my mind: even lacking any context for the words, I felt electrified by the truth they managed so simply to express, and by the sense of wise, intimate authority the second-person address carried. 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. In Black life, humor helps make the unbearable bearable. I'd squint into it, or close my eyes And let it slam me in the face The known sun setting On the dawning century. I think it urges the viewer to submit to the terms and values of the subjects rather than cling to any pre-existing sense of what dignity or autonomy ought to look like. Capitalist realism is the language of the boardroom, the pop-up ad, the tax form, the PR statement, the subway banner, the chip-card reader, the medical bill, the Fidelity account. 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. This view of history as contested territory is in turn based on a tentatively hopeful view of selfhood in which all is intersubjective. SMITH: I like the way that humor exists in our lives, even in the dark and difficult moments. Title notwithstanding, the poem doesnt feel ostentatiously politicalcertainly not compared to some of its neighbors (e.g. K Smith. I didnt set out to write a found poem, but when I got far enough into that research, I understood that I didnt want to merely metabolize all of these other real voices and then speak something imagined or invented out in my own voice; rather, I wanted to make space for these very compelling voices to speak to a reader the ways they had spoken to me. Curtis Fox: That was An Old Story. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Across all four of your collections, many poems speak through personae. I am always asking poems to show me who we are, what we are connected to, what our actions and choices set into motion, and whether it might somehow be possible to become better at being human. Each ashamed of the same things: The poet is having an ominous sense that this century is going to be quite something to handle, which turned out to be true. Her latest book is Cast Away, from Greenwillow Books. WebTracy K. Smith is a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and a professor of English and of African and African American Studies in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Curtis Fox: Its one of the curiosities of your book, that to grapple with this dawning century you go back into history with poems in the voices of the enslaved and powerless, and you also make interesting use of the Declaration of Independence. Tracy K. Smith: An erasure poem is almost like a You know you see those government documents that are redacted, so there are these big black lines that delete certain elements of the text, and youre left with a different path through those ideas. The something climbs, leaps, isFalling now across us like the prank of an icy, brainyLord. That seems to me not so much about privacy but about consumerism in some way. But the poet respectfully appropriates them, placing each within her linguistic universe, where things like line breaks and image patterns matter, and as such the erasure is partly undone. In October, Graywolf Press will Life on Mars is pointed into the future as a way of reckoning with all of that, while Wade in the Water takes up history in a similar effort. Poems, like movies, are good at indulging this wish. Tracy K. Smith: Sure. WebMy maker says this poem reminds him of the little groceries and bodegas of his onetime New York neighborhood. Both are longing for some kind of extra-human counterpoint to the real, the earthbound, the flawed, the finite. 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. On Montague Street the Declaration of Independence erasure). WebSummary Semi-Splendid by Tracy K. Smith explores an argument from two perspectives.Both perspectives come from Smith, yet one is from a nice perspective, in which the poet typically just allows her boyfriend to win the argument, and the other perspective focuses on this moment, in which she stands up for herself and begins to I will say it flat-out: I do not like poetry. What made you decide to use collage rather than writing something inspired by the archives? Film awards like the Oscars often have a best-animated film category, and this is dumb. Im listening for possibilities in meaning and emotional tone, and trying to make useful formal decisions, in a way that is more similar than different to what happens when I am writing. For instance, an entire found poem (Smiths term) called Watershed comprises narratives of near-death experience juxtaposed with fragments from a New York Times story about a DuPont chemical disaster that poisoned an entire Ohio community. SMITH: For I Will Tell You the Truth About This I went in search of information about African American soldiers experience in the Civil War. But even, it seemed to answer some of the questions that come up when we talk about this racial divide. WebGarden of Eden By Tracy K. Smith What a profound longing I feel, just this very instant, For the Garden of Eden On Montague Street Where I seldom shopped, Usually only after therapy Elbow sore at the crook From a handbasket filled To capacity. What a profound longing Her work travels the world and takes on its voices; brings history and The way you can break into laughter remembering something while at a funeral, say, and WebGarden of Eden story: summary On the sixth day of Creation, God created man in the form of Adam, moulding him from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7), breathing the breath So the poems change for me too, which is I think affirmation that something real is happening. Brought on a different manner of weather. Capitalism has made a nightmare world, and we can either resist its pressures or chill with our smartphones and wait for climate change to kill us.Along comes Tracy K. Smiths new book, Wade in the Water (Graywolf). Terrible. Wade in the Water is, wonderfully, a Poet Laureates booka book that speaks for the poet herself and for us all, at a perilous moment in our history. Thanks for listening. Where I seldom shopped, For a long time I didnt know what to do with my interest in the Nathaniel Rich article that informs Watershed. Then, after most of the manuscript was finished, I had the idea of marrying the facts from that article, in a found poem, with the narratives of near-death-experience (NDE) survivorspeople whose vocabularies almost across the board invoke the sense of Love as an original animating force, as the logic of the universe. Smith works like a novelist, curating the national tongue. From trees. I love the things my students are willing to learn, and the risks they are willing to take with their poems. Tracy K. Smith served as U.S. poet laureate from 2017-19 and teaches at Princeton University. Several poems in Wade in the Water were written after translating poems of hers called In the Distance and Green Trees Greet the Rainstorm.WASHINGTON SQUARE: Section III of Wade in the Water ends with a Political Poem: a vision of workers cutting grass and communicating intermittently by raising their arms. Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018) was her fourth collection of poems. All Rights Reserved. A sense of regret that I hadnt perhaps actively articulated to myself found a way into the poem. Tracy K. Smith has her head in the stars. I see it as my job to draw these things out, and offer the kinds of questions and observations that will help students move further into their strengths as writers, and to follow them toward an organic and genuine sense of their own deepening themes and questions. And its a way of bearing witness to what is otherwise unspeakable. Below you can find the poem followed by my analysis. I think we have reached a moment where we need new myths.WASHINGTON SQUARE: The titles and cover art of your two most recent collections suggest a sort of pairing: Life on Mars, with its image of the Cone Nebula, points to the cosmic, while Wade in the Water presents as more earthbound. I just feel that sometimes they strive more to be abstract rather than deliver a coherent message. The United States expanding industrial wealth in the nineteenth century was inseparable from this machine; American capital has always been massed on the backs on nonwhite people.These appellants use the lingo of capitalism, insofar as they are asking for money. The pedestrian sees himself one way hears his own music in those engines idling for him but who doesnt? WebGarden of Eden What a profound longing I feel, just this very instant, For the Garden of Eden On Montague Street Where I seldom shopped, Usually only after therapy Elbow WebAnalyzes tracy k. smith's "life on mars" as an elegy as a whole with many poems pertaining to death and s struggle with the loss of her father. 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. The United States Welcomes You opens with the line, Why and by whose power were you sent? and closes with the line, How and to whom do we address our appeal? It was landing on that parallel syntax that told me the poem was over. More information available at www.susannalang.com. I also agree. Its current occupant is Tracy K. Smith, who was named Poet Laureate in 2017. She comes home with her paper bags and looks at the numbers to her name and it ultimately slam[s] [her] in the face; she perceives a life of luxury and craves more from life than that of which she can afford. We took new stock of one another. Poetry does not really resonate with me. Over her career, she has published a memoir and four books of poetry, including The Garden of Eden is a semiautobiographical account based on Hemingways honeymoon with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, in May, 1927, at Le Grau Everyone I knew was living Home the paper bags, doing Unlike a lot of other poets I was looking at, she has a certain flavor that just really fit to my taste. Email us at [emailprotected], or write a review in Apple Podcasts, and please link to this episode on social media. Curtis Fox: Now you hinted at it, but its an erasure poem. 4 (September 2018), RHINO Reviews Vol. Its also the title of a poem in the books first section, and it reverberates in images of water throughout the collectionin the poems Watershed and The Everlasting Self, for example. But the point of material restitution isnt to create new hoards of capital or to employ it in fresh exploitative ventures; rather, the money these people are owed for their service to what was once a Republic is a form of human acknowledgement, a way of saying that their lives mattered. (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.). Are they something you mostly notice cropping up in poems youve already written, or do they often enter through conscious choices like the ones you describe with Watershed and Eternity?SMITH: I tend to write and bank poems slowly for long stretches of time, and then, when I have the extended time and space, or when my questions become more urgent, I sit down to a season of intense writing. Its current occupant is Tracy K. Smith, who was named Poet Laureate in 2017. Its been something I will be sad to cease doing, and I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to go out across the country at this time in particular. Elbow sore at the crook WASHINGTON SQUARE: Thats fascinating! L.I. Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. Unlike a lot of other poets I was looking at, she has a certain flavor that just really fit to my taste. K Smith. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration. I struggle a lot with interpreting metaphorical words often used by poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases. 1 No. destroyed the lives of our Tracy K. Smith served as U.S. poet laureate from 2017-19 and teaches at Princeton University. Wade in the Water begins with the desolate luxury of the ironically titled Garden of Copyright 2018 by Tracy K. Smith. WebThe story Garden of Eden introduces the first man and woman that God created. and was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon Tracy. I think it has to do with the joy of losing oneself in something, which is what happens when a poem is really going somewhere. After you read this poem by the former U.S. What happens to our relationships with others under these conditions which have resolved personal worth into exchange value, as Marx and Engels write in The Communist Manifesto? WebPoems, readings, poetry news and the entire 100-year archive of POETRY magazine. How did you arrive at the title, and what do you hope it suggests or encapsulates for readers?While working on the book, I had the experience of attending a ring shout and feeling so deeply moved and shaken by the performance of Wade in the Water. After that evening, I suspected that Wade in the Water was going to be the title of my book. Still so nave as to stand squared, erect, Impervious facing the window open. Tracy K. Smith: I think about the incredible systematic and orderly attempts to negate black life throughout the history of this country, and then I think about the voices and the contributions to democracy that Blacks have offered, and those two things speak really powerfully to each other. Over her career, she has published a memoir and four books of poetry, including Life On Mars, which won the Pulitzer Prize several years ago. At the time, I wasnt writing many poems; I was working on my prose memoir, and feeling, somewhat guiltily, that it might be a good idea to take the opportunity to produce a new poem. 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. Wade in the Water in particular enlists a whole chorus of voices, including historical ones resurrected almost verbatim in collages and erasures. She has also written a memoir,Ordinary Light(2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. Curtis Fox: And the poem ends ominously, as if were about to be kicked out of the Garden of Eden, not only the store but innocence in general. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/magazine/poem-beatific.html. This is my favorite feeling, something charged and electric. But in other events, Ive gone into almost curated spaces, like rehab facilities or churches, or we have an upcoming trip that will take us to a retirement community. Curtis Fox: So I wanted to ask you about your time as Poet Laureate, but before we get there, Id like to get straight to a poem. And then theres that line in Eternity: as though all of us must be / Buried deep within each other. How does poetry foreground or grapple with distinctions between the self and others? Bouncing balls, the kind that lifts nothing. Not only that, several poems were originally written for separate projects: museum exhibitions, an NPR broadcast, an academic conference. It was so strange. Smith mingles these themes in The World is Your Beautiful Younger Sister, where the body of a woman stands in for the planet itself; Smith plays on old Western conceptions of nature as a female resource to be commanded by men and their technologies. , she has a certain flavor that just really fit to my.... 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