The analysis was to consist of identifying poetic devices and explaining how and why Tracy K. Smith used them. This poem is pretty upsetting and kinda relatable. As for imaginative play, maybe that comes from another place. Can you tell us a little bit about this poem before you read it? I struggle a lot with interpreting metaphorical words often used by poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases. Tracy K. Smith begins her poem The Good Life with a subordinate clause: Whenpeople talk (Line 1). The first line introduces the readers to both the casual toneof the poem and draws them in to the discussion with which the poem is concerned, prompting them to read the next line in order to answer the question implicitly posed in the first. I was blown away by how it seemed to capture the mood of our historical moment. 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. I often find that, after working on several new translations, I am driven to write. 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)? I honestly really enjoyed this poem, particularly the ending clause. Social media, this idea that if you have a life its only useful or only real if you can demonstrate it, I feel like the beginning of that frenzy or that appetite seems to line up in my mind with that period, yeah. Her latest book is Wade In The Water. I think in these most recent poems, Im trying to figure something out about the possibility of something like universal oneness. And then our singing. This is an essential book, one that should be required reading throughout the land. 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. 4 (September 2018), Emily Jungmin Yoon, Maya Marshall, RHINO Reviews Vol. Mattan Masri- Week 16: Animation is not a Genre, Bella Furst Week 1 | Ranking Chicken and Why Chicken Nuggets are the Best, Bella Furst | Week 20 "The United States Welcomes You" by Tracy K. Smith, Bella Furst Week 4 | "Garden of Eden" by Tracy K. Smith. Bank-balance math and counting days. Free UK p&p Aside from that, I like your analysis of the poem. My natural process is to try and distribute the weight of the poem across these mechanisms, but I get very excited when the poem has other plans for itself and leans more toward a rhythmic energy, or toward the rigid structure of rhyme or repetition. WebMetal claws poised over a valley of rubber. destroyed the lives of our Places where reading series and book festivals dont usually go. The narrow untouched hips. Pessimism hobbles anyone who is paying attention. Its been great. Her And its a way of bearing witness to what is otherwise unspeakable. 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. What are you really getting at there? The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. The way you can break into laughter remembering something while at a funeral, say, and how that can both deepen and lighten your sense of grief. The author of four books of poems, she received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Naomi Shihab Nye is the Young Peoples Poet Laureate of the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. And youre leaving it to us, the reader, to fill in the blank. He has plundered our Its current occupant is Tracy K. Smith, who was named Poet Laureate in 2017. Curtis Fox: The poem ends with an erasure, it ends ambiguously, taken Captive / on the high Seas / to bear as you just read, and its with a dash there at the end. Tracy K. Smith was born in Massachusetts and raised in northern California. Her latest book is Cast Away, from Greenwillow Books. 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. When capital is everything, queasy questions[1] bubble up: Is capitalism compatible with democracy? Tracy K. Smith, "Dusk" from Wade in the Water. Garden 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, After you read this poem by the former U.S. For me, the memory of catching a poem in that fashion seeps into the sense of peace the poem contemplates, causing it to feel fleeting, like something it would be easy, if youre not working very deliberately, to lose.WASHINGTON SQUARE: Your poems have a habit of calling chronology into question. Did writing your memoir indeed open up new space for that? But those things came out in this poem. Or next to nothing and drops it in the chute. Tracy K. Smith, I hope your poem is a prophecy. She has also written a memoir,Ordinary Light(2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. 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. But even, it seemed to answer some of the questions that come up when we talk about this racial divide. 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. And I guess in some ways thats a scary place to be. Duende is a book that grapples with what it means to me to be an American. 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. ravaged our Even if the question animating the poem is a serious one, that sense of being lost in the pursuit is, inevitably, a happy thingit is about finding something that can constitute a productive path through or out of the matter at hand. Tracy K. Smith: Yeah, the sense of dark possibility rose to the surface. We get collage, erasure, short lyrics, long sectioned pieces; speakers grapple with the Civil War, immigration, faith, environmental damage, motherhood, grocery shopping. 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. From trees. I sensed my work as one of curating rather than composing. Redress in the most humble terms: And then we find a way to have a conversation. 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. SMITH: The older I get, the more I begin to think of Time as not just a force or a law of nature, but as a presence we live alongside, someone rather than something. Like the letters themselves, Smiths poem is restorative. But that isnt enough, and so I am also listening for clues in the sounds of what I have already said that might help me determine what to say next. WebTracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. 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. SMITH: I think my strength is the image. I guess Ive been thinking a lot about mythology. Her latest book is Wade In The Water. 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. And then I said well, why dont I just look at the Declaration of Independence and see what I can hear there? 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. Still so nave as to stand squared, erect, Impervious facing the window open. 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? Tracy K. Smith, "Declaration" from Wade in the Water. Many of the poems focus on history, whether spiritual or political. I spent about 2 hours going through this list of poets trying to find someone that I could just. A few years ago, actually several years ago now, I wrote a sonnet that I contributed to an anthology called Monticello in Mind, that was edited by Lisa Russ Spaar, and they were poems about Thomas Jefferson. What do you try to impart as a teacher, and what, if anything, has teaching poetry taught you about writing it? Smith works like a novelist, curating the national tongue. WebMy maker says this poem reminds him of the little groceries and bodegas of his onetime New York neighborhood. 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. You were appointed Poet Laureate in 2017, after Trump was inaugurated. Once, a bag of black beluga Looking back, do you have a sense of your writerly evolution across your books? In Black life, humor helps make the unbearable bearable. This was the shattered promise of Reconstruction, which collapsed under the weight of reactionary white politics (and outright terrorism) by the late 1870s. 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. How do you feel now about taking up race in your poetry? 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. 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. Although the last section of the book includes poems with a similarly wide lens, Smith also evokes small moments with her children. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration. 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? Susanna Langs newest collection of poems,Travel Notes from the River Styx,was released in summer 2017 from Terrapin Books. Have your process and preoccupations changed? That distinction gets complicated once you open the booksbut I wonder if you do see these collections as particularly complementing or speaking to each other? Though its not like we have much of choice. I had the same problem choosing my poet. sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people Her translations of poetry by Yves Bonnefoy include Words in Stone and The Origin of Language. Jill: That's a really cool origin story. I chose the title Watershed even before the poem itself had been written. And if Trump has done anything positive for the country, hes inadvertently, by his own racist statements and actions, put the conversation front and center in American life. How did you fill in that blank as you were writing that? WebSMITH: I like the way that humor exists in our lives, even in the dark and difficult moments. Her poem is an erasure poem, a form of found poetry, making it even more successful in her criticism of the original document. K Smith. 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 it has to do with the joy of losing oneself in something, which is what happens when a poem is really going somewhere. As Auden supposedly said in conversation, you cant half-read it. 4 (September 2018). His arms churn the air. 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. How does Political Poem complement and converse with the books more overtly, explicitly political poems? Wade in the Water, by Tracy K. SmithGraywolf Press, 2018. What about you? 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. I love chicken. 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. Because having them suggests a sense of unearned privilege? WebTracy K. Smith begins her poem The Good Life with a subordinate clause: Whenpeople talk (Line 1). Comprehending, and perhaps steering, its history requires love amid the ruins.Unrest in Baton Rouge underscores this. Its actually the last poem in your book. Its exciting and also a bit frightening to be moving through someone elses imagination and vocabulary, trying to render that work into English with what feels, hopefully, like an indigenous sensibility. Email us at [emailprotected], or write a review in Apple Podcasts, and please link to this episode on social media. What made you decide to use collage rather than writing something inspired by the archives? 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. And Life on Mars attempts to confront being human. 83 pp.Reviewed by Susanna Lang. But before we get to the analysis, lets briefly summarise the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. 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 of life into Adams nostrils. It was so strange. I am thunderstruck by the human care of these last lines. 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. 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. For the Garden of Eden In June 2017, Smith was named U.S. poet laureate. God said everything that was in that garden they could use to 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. Im really happy I stumbled upon Tracy K. Smith and I look forward to reading more of her work. Then, after the creation of poems winds down, I get practical and try to clarify, amplify, trim and arrange to the most powerful effect. 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. Curtis Fox: That was An Old Story. 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. Actually, the first poem in Wade in the Water, its called Garden of Eden and it is shockingly about shopping, in a sense. For Smith, this is a lavish shop that seems to be selling a very specific selection of goods. Tracy K. Smith served as U.S. poet laureate from 2017-19 and teaches at Princeton University. If we laugh at it, it has less power over us. 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. What made you choose to start (and end?) They are places to test out new lines of inquiry. 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. Then I felt like the poem could finally get somewhere. Thanks to her late father's job as an engineer on the Hubble Space Telescope, the US poet gathers inspiration from Curtis Fox: And what about the desolate luxury? 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