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. 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. And then we find a way to have a conversation. And maybe thats me speaking as someone in mid life, someone whos the parent of kids and has fears about the future. It was no longer important or necessary, and I wanted to just listen to these fragments within this founding document, and feel the sort of startled andI dont know, just a sense of inevitability that those statements kind of gathered around themselves. We were almost certain theywere. Not just me, not just people who are fresh out of whatever you do in the first years after graduate school into adulthood, thinking that Ill be happy if I can almost afford the things that I want, if I can somehow find a way to buy what life seems to offer to other people. Teaching is inspiring for me. Is it strange to say love is a languageFew practice, but all, or near all speak?Even the men in black armor, the onesJangling handcuffs and keys, what elseAre they so buffered against, if not loves bladeSizing up the hearts familiar meat? 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. Do found texts youve worked with sometimes inform your subsequent writing? WebTracy K. Smith begins her poem The Good Life with a subordinate clause: Whenpeople talk (Line 1). Song allows us to hope for new connections: The interior sections of Smiths collection lift up others voices and names, to which she joins her own. 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. Sort of the innocence of consumerism before bad things happen. 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multi-form elegies, all of Smiths work feels radically alivetraversing space and time; rife with cultural and historical references (to, for example, rock music; scientific research; classic movie scenes); and always illuminating with great care the complexities of consciousness and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. Youve talked a bit about Wade in the Waters genesis, but more broadly, how early on do you typically begin to sense a manuscripts overarching themes? Buy RHINO MagazineDonate to RHINOPoemsReviewsEvents Submissions InternshipsAbout RHINOMasthead. Tracy K. Smith, "Dusk" from Wade in the Water. Tracy K. Smith: I have, and I didnt know if I would. 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. Even going into the first trip, I was thinking okay, Im performing a service. Every small want, every niggling urge. Wade in the Water in particular enlists a whole chorus of voices, including historical ones resurrected almost verbatim in collages and erasures. Its current occupant is Tracy K. Smith, who was named Poet Laureate in 2017. So I had to kind of really think about it, before saying yes. Home on Earth - Review of Tracy K. Smith's "Wade in The Water" WebMetal claws poised over a valley of rubber. 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. I spent about 2 hours going through this list of poets trying to find someone that I could just. Actually, the first poem in Wade in the Water, its called Garden of Eden and it is shockingly about shopping, in a sense. This is so brilliant, this is such a clear idea. 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. Tracy K. Smith has her head in the stars. It comes down to simple math.The beach belongs to none of us, regardlessof color, or money. We thought the birds were singing louder. Perhaps stepping into that subject matter imparted a courageor simply a vocabulary and an awarenessthat hasnt vanished. 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? Aside from that, I like your analysis of the poem. He put the two of them in a garden where they did not have to provide for themselves. 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. Not only that, several poems were originally written for separate projects: museum exhibitions, an NPR broadcast, an academic conference. 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. And sound helped me devise the poems exit strategy as well. Bank-balance math and counting days. 1 No. One quick way to define capitalism is to observe that it entails the dedication of all things, all human objects and ideas and actions, to profit, to the continual accumulation of wealth in private hands. I dont yet know how to classify Wade in the Water. He has In this book, Im doing that more relentlessly. taking away our, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our, In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for 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. I had the same problem choosing my poet. Then I felt like the poem could finally get somewhere. Where I seldom shopped, The glossy Tracy K. Smith: Sure. She has also written a memoir,Ordinary Light(2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. You pay attention because it wades in deep. / We never left the room. So I thought, what could I do? 4 (September 2018), RHINO Reviews Vol. I honestly really enjoyed this poem, particularly the ending clause. In this manner, they accumulate tools that can be put to use upon their own material. And in this awful year, thats something worth giving thanks for. His comic jogCarries him nowhere. I often think of a wonderful Marie Howe poem called The Star Market which begins: The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday. These are the old, the sick, the people a healthy young person might recoil from. The known sun setting Tracy K. Smith was born in Massachusetts and raised in northern California. Thanks for listening. Capitalism, Fisher intones, is what is left when beliefs have collapsed at the level of ritual or symbolic elaboration, and all that is left is the consumer-spectator, trudging through the ruins and the relics.Is there any alternative to the morose conviction that nothing new can ever happen (Fisher again)? What a profound longing Theyre intimate spaces where we can really stop and say, okay, heres a poem by this American poet whos voice I think is so important, what do you hear within it? When capital is everything, queasy questions[1] bubble up: Is capitalism compatible with democracy? But one day, when I was kind of working in the vein, I was sitting at my desk and I just had this vivid memory of shopping in a grocery store in Brooklyn, and this pang of nostalgia for that moment in my life, and this poem kind of just came out. WebThe assignment consisted of reading this newly published poem and then writing an analysis. There is deep unease in those lines that Ive been puzzling over, and why would somebody be ashamed of innocence and privacy? Tracy K. Smith discusses her new book and her tenure as current US poet laureate. Poetry wasnt really on my radar thenat least nothing contemporarybut I was taking a required composition course, and in the classroom I spotted a poster bearing some lines from a poem. 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. / Pomegranate, persimmon, quince!), even though the ultimate act is to be a good consumer and buy things. But it is as if he hears, A voice in our idling engines, calling himLithe, Swift, Prince of Creation. Doing so would mean transforming language in its social, political, psychological, and aesthetic dimensions; it would mean altering how we speak in public, of other people, and in private, to ourselves.Poetry might not seem like the best way to catalyze a revolution. What made you choose to start (and end?) Consider, that is, the languages and practices we have developed to exist within Western consumer markets. Or was it just a sense of being spurred to write by the experience of working intensively with language?SMITH: Yi Lei has big questions. The story of that poem is that it woke me up one night. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/magazine/poem-beatific.html. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Speaking a few years ago with Gregory Pardlo, you mentioned that music, image, form and departure are the things Im conscious of managing in a poem. Can you say a little more about balancing these qualitiesand, perhaps, how you know when one or two of them want to predominate? Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. Then, after the creation of poems winds down, I get practical and try to clarify, amplify, trim and arrange to the most powerful effect. Curtis Fox: Now you hinted at it, but its an erasure poem. It felt very much like a plea that could live in the 21st century, around all the instances of violence against unarmed black citizens. SMITH: That poem was originally published as The Mowers. Then I read it in Washington, DC in 2016 and realized that the poems wish is for something graceful, wordless, grateful and sustaining to link these two imaginary strangers in common understanding. I liked setting up, via the title, the expectation of something rigid or dogmatic, and then allowing the poem itself to be gentle. My thirties. 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. Wade in the Water by Tracy K Smith is published by Penguin (8.99). Moreover, my sense of the nearness of the pastthe way that our public grappling with race and racial prejudice has begun to feel so much like a throwback from an earlier timeignited the urgent wish to hear something in an earlier periods voices that might be useful at this moment in the 21st Century.The title Wade in the Water comes from an African American spiritual, which seems apt for a collection that thinks so much about faith, race, and history (especially the Civil War), and for a poet whose previous book took its name from a song, too. In a recent podcast of her conversation with Curtis Fox of the Poetry Foundation, Tracy K. Smith says that being Poet Laureate is a kind of service (Off the Shelf, July 31, 2018). Poetry allows us to bridge our differences, to remind ourselves that we do have things to say to each other, that we are interested in each others lives and vulnerabilities. In this new collection, Smith explores, mourns and even celebrates those vulnerabilities, both national and individual. Or how you can sometimes see the humor in your own dire or embarrassing situation, and how that can be both frustrating and something you file away under Things that Will Be Funny in the Future. If I read a poem about my father, sometimes if the poem is doing its work, you might begin to think about your relationship with your father, even if it might be different from what my poem says. Too late. 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? Both are longing for some kind of extra-human counterpoint to the real, the earthbound, the flawed, the finite. The Garden of Eden is a semiautobiographical account based on Hemingways honeymoon with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, in May, 1927, at Le Grau 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. I feel, just this very instant, Like the couplet that led me to her work, Smiths writing seems often to spring from an empathetic impulse, animated by common human experiences and invested in the insight we can gain by watching and listening to each other. Im really happy I stumbled upon Tracy K. Smith and I look forward to reading more of her work. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Thats fascinating! 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. I love chicken. The theme music for this program comes from the Claudia Quintent. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org. My found poems behave differently, but those possibilities were somewhere in my mind as I worked. And, for all their sagacity and poisetheir precise images and finely-crafted musicSmiths poems manage to be, too, surprising and audacious. All Rights Reserved. Purchasing food, however, leaves the speaker anxious: It was Brooklyn. I carried the wish to write a poem about that story with me for a year-and-a-half. For the Garden of Eden Smith continues that it was Brooklyn and everyone she had known was living. 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 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. The first trip was to Sante Fe, New Mexico, to the Santa Fe Indian School and some neighboring pueblos, and I realized this is joy. I also thought when this poem first came to me, this is what poetry is for, this is what poetry can do. The opening poems of Wade in the Water seem to locate the divine in the worldly, sometimes to humorous effect: God drives around in a jeep, and the Garden of Eden turns out to be a grocery store. Her latest book is Wade In The Water. And Life on Mars attempts to confront being human. Tracy K. Smith served as U.S. poet laureate from 2017-19 and teaches at Princeton University. 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. Lentils spilt a trail behind me to bear. 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. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Im also curious, hearing about how you created the found poemsare there any poets whose work has inspired or instructed you specifically in this domain of found/collaged poetry, or poetry that incorporates historical source documents?SMITH: I have taught CD Wrights One Big Self, in both the poetry and photography formats, to my students in the past. Curtis Fox: And what about the desolate luxury? After you read this poem by the former U.S. 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. WebSMITH: I like the way that humor exists in our lives, even in the dark and difficult moments. Tracy K. Smith, "Declaration" from Wade in the Water. Tracy K. Smith: Well, Ive been going into rural communities in different parts of the country. 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. Curtis Fox: So this poem is set in pre-Facebook times. 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. The poem, titled Garden of Eden begins with Smith acknowledging a profound longing for her Garden of Eden, or moreover her personal paradise. She's also the author of a memoir, Ordinary Light, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Unlike a lot of other poets I was looking at, she has a certain flavor that just really fit to my taste. Do these various modes of working with existing text feel similar to each other? Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. They do a lot to remind us that we do have things to say to each other, that were interested in one anothers lives and vulnerabilities. For Smith, this is a lavish shop that seems to be selling a very specific selection of goods. Over her career, she has published a memoir and four books of poetry, including What do you try to impart as a teacher, and what, if anything, has teaching poetry taught you about writing it? But if I do my job correctly, they slip away from that transparency and become something more than Id initially thought I was after. 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. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Im intrigued by the extent to which youve referred to this poem as an autonomous entity: it seems to be voiced, what I read as fear or hesitation. Are there some poems that seem more or less transparent to you, more or less within your understanding and control, than others?SMITH: Oh, sure. One of the closing lines is an eerie warning: its global. The worlds first great carbon empire, the United States, is committing suicide, but at least some people are getting richer.The books center is I Will Tell You the Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About It. This long poem, divided into sections based on different voices, consists of material Smith culled from the letters of black Civil War veterans and their wives, children, siblings, and widows, many of whom wrote to President Lincoln asking for financial assistance, in many cases pay that was owed them. Did that effect the way that you thought about what you were going to do as Poet Laureate? My thirties.Everyone I knew was livingThe same desolate luxury,Each ashamed of the same things:Innocence and privacy. Her term will be up in April of 2019. (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.). Im talking about the many products, services, networks, trends, apps, tools, toys, as well as the drugs and devices for remedying their effects that are pitched to us nonstop: in our browser sidebars, in the pages of print media, embedded in movies and TV shows, on airplanes, in taxis and trains and even toilet stalls. An Old Story is born out of the wish to write a new myth. 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 way you can break into laughter remembering something while at a funeral, say, and Can you explain exactly what that means in terms of what you did with the Declaration of Independence? In a 2016 interview for The Iowa Review, you commented, I never have figured out how to talk about race in my poetry in a way that feels authentic and organic, and Ordinary Light is a book in which Im thinking so much about race. Wade in the Water seems to engage this topic compellingly and with great assurance. 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. 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. Tracy K. 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