This poem is pretty upsetting and kinda relatable. 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. 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. Her last collection was Tracing the Lines(Brick Road Poetry Press, 2013). This was the shattered promise of Reconstruction, which collapsed under the weight of reactionary white politics (and outright terrorism) by the late 1870s. How does Political Poem complement and converse with the books more overtly, explicitly political poems? I see humor as one of the things that keeps us alive. 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? This week, Retelling the American Story. The something climbs, leaps, isFalling now across us like the prank of an icy, brainyLord. Its actually the last poem in your book. (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.). When capital is everything, queasy questions[1] bubble up: Is capitalism compatible with democracy? I thought of to bear witness, as the book itself does, but I also thought to bear unspeakable suffering. This poem is set in the beginning of the shift in our perspective, this idea that privacy is something that we can live above, in a way. Price and value, Smith reminds us, are not the same thing.In a recent lecture published by the Washington Post, she calls poetry a radically re-humanizing force, one that comes closest to bringing us into visceral proximity with the lives and plights of others. She contrasts it with the market-driven language that divides everything into a brutal war of all against all and debilitates our minds: I also, more and more, recognize its value as a remedy to the various things that have bombarded our lines of sight and our thought space, and that tamper with our ability or even our desire to listen to that deeply rooted part of ourselves. 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. 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. At the same time, several shorter poems contain a lyric I observing a stranger (for example, Beatific and Charity). So I did that with this document, and what I found myself doing was deleting the text that was most specific in reference to England, and listening only to the first half, in many cases, of statements. That sometimes comes out in revision, as was the case with Ash. The poem was little more than a list of ideas until I was able to sit down and hear a set of rhythmic parameters begin to assert force. So the poems change for me too, which is I think affirmation that something real is happening. This is my favorite feeling, something charged and electric. 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. Terrible. I struggle a lot with interpreting metaphorical words often used by poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases. She didn'tKnow me, but I believed her,And a terrible new acheRolled over in my chest,Like in a room where the drapesHave been swept back. 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. And I love how Wright allows the text of her various speakers to become a kind of chorus. You know, popular myths that we cleave to as Americans, and there are a lot of poems in this book that have titles that are biblical. Declaration uses erasure to repurpose Thomas Jeffersons litany of complaints against King George, evoking the slaves forced migration to this country and their experience here of unspeakable oppression. 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. Do found texts youve worked with sometimes inform your subsequent writing? An Old Story is born out of the wish to write a new myth. She does something trickier and more important: her work conjures up, with vivid particularity, at the level of the individual, what it is like to live under late capitalism. Once I have a body of realized poems that feels substantialsay, 30 or 40 pagesI start to hunt for the different things the poems seem to be saying to one another in an effort to decipher what is missing. One of the women greeted me.I love you, she said. I think its because i'm not very artistic that it doesn't come so easy. He has 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 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 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. In Black life, humor helps make the unbearable bearable. Tracy K. Smith: Yeah, the sense of dark possibility rose to the surface. From a handbasket filled 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. Our repeated 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? What made you decide to use collage rather than writing something inspired by the archives? A two-time Hambidge fellow, her poems have appeared in such publications as Little Star, Prairie Schooner, december, American Life in Poetry andVerse Daily. If capitalist institutions erase memory and sweep everything into an eternal present of consumption, poetry is a slow art with a long memory and an expansive capacity to imagine other worlds. And its a way of bearing witness to what is otherwise unspeakable. I watch him bob across the intersection,Squat legs bowed in black sweatpants. It was Brooklyn. 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? 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). Curtis Fox: Yeah, its one of those poems, when you read it you think God, somebody should have done this years ago. Her work travels the world and takes on its voices; brings history and I wanted to find a way of reminding myself that our 21st Century moment isnt self-contained; somewhere and somehow, it has bearing upon what happens moving forward throughout all of eternity, even after we humans are gone from this planet. Susanna Langs newest collection of poems,Travel Notes from the River Styx,was released in summer 2017 from Terrapin Books. Then, after the creation of poems winds down, I get practical and try to clarify, amplify, trim and arrange to the most powerful effect. To say that shes very goodthat her poetry is not screwing aroundis to state what has become increasingly obvious over the past decade. Tracy K. Smith, "Dusk" from Wade in the Water. Home the paper bags, doing He has plundered our I think in these most recent poems, Im trying to figure something out about the possibility of something like universal oneness. On June 14, 2017, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced the appointment of Tracy K. Smith as the 22nd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Curtis Fox: Dr Hayden from the Library of Congress, right? Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018) was her fourth Analyzes how the first poem in the book sums up the primary focus of the works in its exploration of loss, grieving, and recovery. Tracy K. Smith: Well, I thought that this conversation about how incapable we as a nation are of having a conversation across political difference or racial difference, that motivated me to think about how poetry might be a kind of bridge. Then animals long believed gone crept down. Hi Tracy, thanks for coming on the podcast. Below you can find the poem followed by my analysis. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Thats fascinating! Comprehending, and perhaps steering, its history requires love amid the ruins.Unrest in Baton Rouge underscores this. And sound helped me devise the poems exit strategy as well. 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. Tracy K. Smith served as U.S. poet laureate from 2017-19 and teaches at Princeton University. Poet Laureate of the United States; its a high perch for an American poet to land on. In part, I think its true to say that the selves Im most committed to in that book are the ones our culture continues to make most vulnerable: women, people of color, the lonely and disenfranchised. She earned a BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Curtis Fox: Now, if the Trump presidency has told us anything, its that racism is alive and well in America. If we laugh at it, it has less power over us. You can read some of her poems on our website. Purchasing food, however, leaves the speaker anxious: It was Brooklyn. Let us know what you think of this podcast. Poetry does not really resonate with me. Each one of us is a collaborative condition, The Everlasting Self puts it.Smith isnt a political theorist, psychologist, historian, or polemicist, though her poetry metabolizes elements of those discourses. I carried the wish to write a poem about that story with me for a year-and-a-half. Have your process and preoccupations changed? But even, it seemed to answer some of the questions that come up when we talk about this racial divide. Curtis Fox: I want to get you to read one more poem. The glossy The known sun setting / We never left the room. In the poem, Declaration , by Tracy K. Smith, the author is able to criticize a powerful document and bring to light the racial injustices in modern-day society. 4 (September 2018), RHINO Reviews Vol. Once, a bag of black beluga Many of the poems focus on history, whether spiritual or political. Innocence and privacy. I was blown away by how it seemed to capture the mood of our historical moment. Her poems pose fundamental questionsabout love, time, mortality, and faith (Is It us, or what contains us? she asks in Life on Mars)and pursue them with imagination, rigor, a bold comfort with uncertainty, and an unswerving commitment to candor and humaneness. Similarly, Theatrical Improvisation draws on the voices of immigrants as well as those who targeted them in the months before and after the 2016 Presidential election. What a profound longing 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. I am thunderstruck by the human care of these last lines. Poems, like movies, are good at indulging this wish. Like the letters themselves, Smiths poem is restorative. Tracy K. Smith: I have, and I didnt know if I would. Curtis Fox: This is Poetry Off The Shelf from The Poetry Foundation. Title notwithstanding, the poem doesnt feel ostentatiously politicalcertainly not compared to some of its neighbors (e.g. This view of history as contested territory is in turn based on a tentatively hopeful view of selfhood in which all is intersubjective. In fact, I think I picked up the pace on my own new poems, and wrote the bulk of Wade in the Water, precisely because of my work on Yi Leis poems. 1 No. And as many have observed since capitalism emerged (see William Blakes Satanic mills or Upton Sinclairs meatpacking plants), this tends to have baleful effects on how we conceive of social relationships and our own selves. And that stage, I want to think of it as a stage that America has gone through. 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. Not only that, several poems were originally written for separate projects: museum exhibitions, an NPR broadcast, an academic conference. I struggle a lot with interpreting metaphorical words often used by poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases. History is in a hurry, runs New Road Station. Onto the darkening dusk. She has taught at Princeton University and Harvard University. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org. And I guess in some ways thats a scary place to be. 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. Jill: That's a really cool origin story. On the dawning century. Curtis Fox:So how did that translate into what you have done, or what you are doing as Poet Laureate? MyHeart hammers at the ceiling, telling my tongueTo turn it down. The dead speak.The poem bores deep into the nations roots, back to the Civil War, which momentarily created opportunities for African Americans to participate in democracy as voters and officeholders, craftsmen and farmers, teachers and doctors; as free agents in America, not chattel. 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. Although the last section of the book includes poems with a similarly wide lens, Smith also evokes small moments with her children. Tracy K. Smith: I hear those two things, but in the reverse order. Its refreshing to hear from a Poet Laureate who holds all of these diverse concerns in her mind and in her voice, from our national tragedy to a four-year-olds refusal to eat her dinner. Its current occupant is Tracy K. Smith, who was named Poet Laureate in 2017. WebTracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. I dreamt that I was in a hotel where there was a mural of that poem, which was by him, painted on a wall, and I was reading it aloud to somebody who was with me. In June 2017, Smith was named U.S. poet laureate. Her term will be up in April of 2019. After you read this poem by the former U.S. Can you tell us a little bit about this poem before you read it? We were almost certain theywere. And then our singing. Because having them suggests a sense of unearned privilege? I like the way that project emphasizes that the various speakers and photo subjects have chosen to not only share parts of their own stories, but also decided how theyd like to be photographed. It is what I instinctively turn to when the idea or statement-muscle stalls during the writing process (which is early-in). 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. WebMy maker says this poem reminds him of the little groceries and bodegas of his onetime New York neighborhood. Im really happy I stumbled upon Tracy K. Smith and I look forward to reading more of her work. 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 love the things my students are willing to learn, and the risks they are willing to take with their poems. A friend recently emailed it to me, even though I hadnt read the book yet. I had the same problem choosing my poet. If we are moving through Time, I suspect Time is moving, too, though who knows where it is heading? 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. This is such a gift, to be able to visit different parts of the country and spend time with people in different communities, and listen to each other, and talk to each other, and think about what poetry already means to people there, and get their feedback on poems that might be new to them. 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. It feels like an empires end: The known sun setting / On the dawning century, as the last two lines go. 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. SMITH: I think the aim of most poems is to erase some measure of the distance between one person and another, usually between the poems speaker and its reader, or between the poems speaker and its subject. on the high Seas Thanks for listening. Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. Curtis Fox: Being Poet Laureate is obviously an honor, but have you enjoyed it? Her latest book is Cast Away, from Greenwillow Books. In Garden of Eden, the first poem in the collection, Smith remembers shopping at a grocery store in Brooklyn that was actually called the Garden of Eden. sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people The narrow untouched hips. WebThe assignment consisted of reading this newly published poem and then writing an analysis. In this book, Im doing that more relentlessly. Tracy K. Smith: Mhmm, yeah. 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. 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. sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our, In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for. 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. In 2014 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship. 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. Yes, these are black voices that have been effaced from history, buried in government archives and exhumed by a few scholars on whose work Smith draws. 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? 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. 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. WebMetal claws poised over a valley of rubber. How do imaginative play and perhaps even humor figure in your process and your poetry right now? 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 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. It comes down to simple math.The beach belongs to none of us, regardlessof color, or money. We thought the birds were singing louder. A tea they refused to carry. 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. We took new stock of one another. 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. Copyright 2018 by Tracy K. Smith. Redress in the most humble terms: Due to the insinuation that this is an expensive shop, she reminisces of being in her thirties and seeing the The glossy pastries! and the Pomegranate, persimmon, [and] quince! sold there. Belongs to none of us, regardlessof color, or money American poet to land.!, California harass our people the narrow untouched hips gone through mourns and even celebrates those vulnerabilities both! Because I 'm not very artistic that it does n't come so easy power over us away. 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