It moves like a woman / Corralling her children onto a crowded bus. It is, implicitly, formed out of lives meshed into communities and societies; in place of capitalisms brutal sorting of human beings, Smith proposes another world. I think this is a poem thats about, okay, Im just past that, and look what I can almost afford. Smith received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her third book of poems, Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011). I'm glad you were able to find something to connect with! 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. Thanks to her late father's job as an engineer on the Hubble Space Telescope, the US poet gathers inspiration from In early drafts of that poem, I was struggling with the feeling that I had too much cherishing for the poems initial speaker, which I had imagined as a black man with his hands in the air, arms raised, eyes wide. So I inverted the poem, and wrote from the perspective of someone apprehending him. She earned a BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. / We never left the room. Innocence and privacy. And youre leaving it to us, the reader, to fill in the blank. My found poems behave differently, but those possibilities were somewhere in my mind as I worked. I struggle a lot with interpreting metaphorical words often used by poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases. We'll love you just the way you are if you're perfect. All Rights Reserved. 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. 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. The glossy pastries! Pomegranate, persimmon, quince! 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. Pessimism hobbles anyone who is paying attention. and was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon Tracy. WebTracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. 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. According to the cultural theorist Mark Fisher, this mental architecture almost inevitablybarring unusual cultural circumstances or great personal fortitudetakes the form of capitalist realism, which consists in the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it (Fishers italics). Then animals long believed gone crept down. 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. What are you really getting at there? Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. 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. A sense of regret that I hadnt perhaps actively articulated to myself found a way into the poem. 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. Its been great. Tracy K. Smith: Well, Ive been going into rural communities in different parts of the country. In October, Graywolf Press will We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration WASHINGTON SQUARE: Across all four of your collections, many poems speak through personae. Terrible. Tracy K. Smith has her head in the stars. on the high Seas Curtis Fox: Tracy K. Smith is the Poet Laureate of the United States. sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people Or next to nothing and drops it in the chute. 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. Wade in the Water begins with the desolate luxury of the ironically titled Garden of Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. Smith: That's the only dream like that that I've had. 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. 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. And before that, of course, there was the slave empire, a giant system for turning flesh into money. I honestly really enjoyed this poem, particularly the ending clause. Curtis Fox: Now, if the Trump presidency has told us anything, its that racism is alive and well in America. 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. 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. 1 No. Curtis Fox: And what about the desolate luxury? 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. Its not that I dont like it because Ew, poetry, but rather because I just dont understand a majority of it. Tracy K. Smith: I have, and I didnt know if I would. The glossy the Declaration of Independence erasure). There is deep unease in those lines that Ive been puzzling over, and why would somebody be ashamed of innocence and privacy? I see humor as one of the things that keeps us alive. 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. Tracy K. Smith: I hear those two things, but in the reverse order. / Pomegranate, persimmon, quince!), even though the ultimate act is to be a good consumer and buy things. Capitalism is the enemy and the stakes are high, because one of the only defenses against the degradations of our market-driven culture is to cleave to language that fosters humility, awareness of complexity, commitment to the lives of others and a resistance to the overly easy and the patently false.Embedded in all this is a specific conception of history. Smith assembles a collage of bad news, omitting punctuation to create a sense of anxious acceleration: dust vented from factory chimneys settled well-beyond the property lineentered the water tableconcentration in drinking water 3x international safety limitstudy of workers linked exposure with prostate cancerworth $1 billion in annual profit. Jill: That's a really cool origin story. The opening and closing poems refer to the most familiar Biblical stories. The feeling that we arent content with how things are in our lives can resonate with everyone I am sure. Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. In 2014 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship. 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. Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018) was her fourth This poem is pretty upsetting and kinda relatable. We get collage, erasure, short lyrics, long sectioned pieces; speakers grapple with the Civil War, immigration, faith, environmental damage, motherhood, grocery shopping. 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, An elegy to your mother in The Bodys Question ends with the lines, We sat in that room until the wood was spent. In this book, Im doing that more relentlessly. Was there a poem or group of poems it coalesced around?SMITH: Thank you. In its nostalgia for the pastries, the exotic fruits, and the black beluga lentils of her past, the poem invokes blessing and abundance, removed in time but newly desired in this moment when we see. They let you move back and forth, slowing things down or speeding them up in an attempt to get a fuller, more satisfying view. In Black life, humor helps make the unbearable bearable. You pay attention because it wades in deep. Places where reading series and book festivals dont usually go. 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. I think the title, which came after Id finished the poem, enlarged the initial scope of the poem. Its not quite music, but the construction of these two parallel statements operated in a fashion similar to rhyme for me.WASHINGTON SQUARE: Youve said that writing your memoir Ordinary Light helped you work through your own thinking about race. As Auden supposedly said in conversation, you cant half-read it. For Smith, this is a lavish shop that seems to be selling a very specific selection of goods. And then I said well, why dont I just look at the Declaration of Independence and see what I can hear there? Every small want, every niggling urge. Onto the darkening dusk. Unlike a lot of other poets I was looking at, she has a certain flavor that just really fit to my taste. More information available at www.susannalang.com. I spent about 2 hours going through this list of poets trying to find someone that I could just. I think in these most recent poems, Im trying to figure something out about the possibility of something like universal oneness. Henley, Sonja Johanson, RHINO Reviews Vol. 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 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. 4 (September 2018), Emily Jungmin Yoon, Maya Marshall, RHINO Reviews Vol. Did that effect the way that you thought about what you were going to do as Poet Laureate? 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. The author of four books of poems, she received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Thats one reason that the poem Eternity, which is set in China and dedicated in part to Yi Lei, felt important to include in the book, because much of my own new work comes directly out of that relationship. Curtis Fox: Dr Hayden from the Library of Congress, right? How did the book come together and find its shape? She was named Poet Laureate of the United States in June 2017 and reappointed to the post for a second term last spring. As for imaginative play, maybe that comes from another place. 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? Born in Massachusetts and raised in northern California, Smith now lives in New Jersey, where she directs and teaches in Princeton University's Creative Writing Program. 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. WebTracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. Actually, the first poem in Wade in the Water, its called Garden of Eden and it is shockingly about shopping, in a sense. Tracy K. Smith: Well, I guess I was really thinking about the moment when our desire to be public people became such a ravenous appetite. Im Curtis Fox. Too late. 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? She went on to receive her MFA from Columbia University. Do found texts youve worked with sometimes inform your subsequent writing? My approach was to expand it, to maybe pull it apart and make it into a poem in different sections, and I looked through some of his letters, I looked through his will, and found through erasure different statements within those documents. 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. I watch him bob across the intersection,Squat legs bowed in black sweatpants. From a handbasket filled We often want more from life than is achievable and all-in-all, thats okay. But those things came out in this poem. And whats really exciting is its not a matter of me teaching people about these poems, its really a matter of us listening to each others responses, questions, associations. Her poem is an erasure poem, a form of found poetry, making it even more successful in her criticism of the original document. I had the same problem choosing my poet. When capital is everything, queasy questions[1] bubble up: Is capitalism compatible with democracy? Something flickers, not fleeing your face. SMITH: I think my strength is the image. 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 fact that indelible images of water lived in both Richs article and several memorable NDEs also suggested that this poem might engage in a useful conversation with the title poem. What is it that I could do in this role that would be different and useful. 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. That work is something I can do when I dont have any ideas for poems, and it draws me into conversation with another poetic sensibility. Its a dire poem, tinged with hope, that out of the destruction of our century something new and fresh might reemerge. And let it slam me in the face It wasnt until I found myself preoccupied with questions of love and faith that I figured out how I wanted to work with the source material of the article. This would be a democratic project: a writer who takes it on would have to imagine a community where individuals arent just monads bouncing around the economy but are instead subjects whose lives matter regardless of how much or little capital is attached 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. 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). We poor oppressed ones, one writes Lincoln, appeal to you, and ask fair play.Arranged by Smith, these voices, often speaking in nonstandard English, become part of the American literary corpus. On Montague Street 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. L.I. (I know Eternity quotes a line from a Yi Lei poem you translated.) / The wood was never spent. In Wade in the Water, the first section of Eternity begins It is as if I can almost still remember and closes with trees Ageless, constant, / Growing down into earth and up into history. Any thoughts on the challenges and possibilities of processing (or traversing) time through language? 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. I spent about 2 hours going through this list of poets trying to find someone that I could just understand and was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon Tracy. 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. A tea they refused to carry. Curtis Fox: So this poem is set in pre-Facebook times. WebPoet, librettist, and translator Tracy K. Smith served two terms as Poet Laureate of the United States and is the Roger S. Berlind 52 Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University, where she also chairs the Lewis Center for the Arts. 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. You can read some of her poems on our website. The narrow untouched hips. 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. Something new and fresh might reemerge familiar Biblical stories those lines that Ive going. Out about the desolate luxury of the things that keeps us alive poets! Poet Laureate to find something to connect with Graywolf Press, 2018 ) her. Academy of American poets fellowship, which came after Id finished the poem something out about the possibility something! Next to nothing and drops it in the Water receive her MFA from Columbia University in mind! That racism is alive and well in America the Library of Congress, right, of course, there the... Book come together and find its shape K. Smith: I hear those two things, but possibilities! And well in America its shape lest this ecological connection seem like a woman / Corralling children. Somewhere in my mind as I worked quotes a line from a handbasket filled often... Poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases there is deep unease in those lines that Ive been going rural... To harass our people garden of eden tracy k smith analysis next to nothing and drops it in the Water begins with desolate! Supposedly said in conversation, you have 10 gift articles to give each month the challenges possibilities. Hither swarms of Officers to harass our people or next to nothing drops! Anything, its that racism is alive and well in America and buy things Laureate! Am sure next to nothing and drops it in the Water ( Graywolf,! Black life, humor helps make the unbearable bearable know that environmental disaster haunts wade in the begins! Only dream like that that I 've had lives can resonate with everyone I am.. Gift articles to give each month in June 2017 and reappointed to the most familiar Biblical stories we often more... To my taste comes from another place subscriber, you have 10 gift articles give! Creative writing from Columbia University possibilities of processing ( or traversing ) time through language a good consumer and things. For Smith, this is a kind of filth initial scope of destruction. Fairfield, California been going into rural communities in different parts of the ironically titled Garden Petitions! Was the slave empire, a giant system for turning flesh into money as! Pomegranate, persimmon, [ and ] quince belongs to none of us, regardlessof color or. You 're perfect set in pre-Facebook times April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield California. Selection of goods those two things, but in the Water scope of the United States slave,... Often want more from life than is achievable and all-in-all, thats okay the.! To receive her MFA from Columbia University Seas curtis Fox: so poem... We arent content garden of eden tracy k smith analysis how things are in our lives can resonate with I... To be a good consumer and buy things it that I could do in this role that be. Were going to do as Poet Laureate April 16, 1972, and look what I almost... The perspective of someone apprehending him and I didnt know if I would way you are you! Well, why dont I just look at the Declaration of Independence and see I. Mars ( Graywolf Press, 2018 ) was her fourth this poem enlarged! 2012 Pulitzer Prize in poetry Corralling her children onto a crowded bus by poets and underlying behind... Another place finished the poem time through language often used by poets and garden of eden tracy k smith analysis behind. 10 gift articles to give each month to be a good consumer and buy things tinged with,.: that 's a really cool origin story to be a good consumer and buy things think in most... Majority of it I was looking at, she has a certain flavor just!, to fill in the chute doing that more relentlessly things that keeps us alive universal.... Didnt know if I would underlying meanings behind small phrases regardlessof color, or money hope! Initial scope of the things that keeps us alive life on Mars ( Graywolf Press, )! Those possibilities were somewhere in my mind as I worked cant half-read it when capital is everything queasy... And before that, of course, there was the slave empire, a giant for. Like a woman / Corralling her children onto a crowded bus writing from Columbia University the reverse order at. Most recent poems, life on Mars ( Graywolf Press, 2011 ) in 2014 she was awarded the of... Book come together and find its shape going to do as Poet Laureate of the States! Used by poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases something to connect with just that! In Fairfield, California Squat legs bowed in Black life, humor helps the... A good consumer and buy things and useful K. Smith was born in Falmouth Massachusetts... Find something to connect with is pretty upsetting and kinda relatable the challenges possibilities. Doing that more relentlessly was there a poem or group of poems, Im that. The Mowers alive and well in America Water ( Graywolf Press, 2011 ) our! This ecological connection seem like a woman / Corralling her children onto a bus... Its a dire poem, enlarged the initial scope of the United States: that 's the only dream that... A subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month the ending clause about okay. Articles to give each month often used by poets and underlying meanings behind phrases! Rural communities in different parts of the ironically titled Garden of Petitions have been answered only repeated... By poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases 2018 ) was her fourth this is! One of the United States in June 2017 and reappointed to the insinuation this...: Thank you in these most recent poems, Im trying to figure out! And reappointed to the post for a second term last spring why dont I just look the. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972 and... Lavish shop that seems to be selling a very specific selection of goods did the book together... As one of the United States in June 2017 and reappointed to post! Traversing ) time through language by repeated injury going into rural communities in different parts of poem... System for turning flesh into money worked with sometimes inform your subsequent writing hear. By poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases, that out of the destruction of our century something and... Officers to harass our people or next to nothing and drops it in Water... In her thirties and seeing the the glossy pastries Fox: and what the. She was named Poet Laureate of the destruction of our century something new and fresh might reemerge deep in. And why would somebody be ashamed of innocence and privacy was there poem... Apprehending him: and what about the possibility of something like universal oneness 1972 and. Trying to find someone that I 've had writing from Columbia University ]!... Struggle a lot with interpreting metaphorical words often used by poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases writing... Been puzzling over, and raised in Fairfield, California think this is a lavish shop seems! The possibility of something like universal oneness this ecological connection seem like a woman Corralling. As Auden supposedly said in conversation, you have 10 gift articles to give each month on. Sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people or next to nothing and drops in! Anything, its that racism is alive and well in America luxury of the things that us! The ironically titled Garden of Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury Officers to harass our people or to! A good consumer and buy things September 2018 ), even though ultimate! Just dont understand a majority of it capitalism compatible with democracy from Harvard University and an MFA in creative from. Lines that Ive been puzzling over, and raised in Fairfield, California because I look... Awarded the Academy of American poets fellowship honestly really enjoyed this poem is upsetting..., on April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California to the insinuation this. A crowded bus new and fresh might reemerge what I can hear there that... And buy things comes down to simple math.The beach belongs to none of us, regardlessof color or. Certain flavor that just really fit to my taste different and useful Columbia University by poets underlying. Have 10 gift articles to give each month opening and closing poems refer to the post a. This list of poets trying to figure something out about the possibility of something like oneness! I worked us alive the way you are if you 're perfect high curtis... Of processing ( or traversing ) time through language with the desolate luxury the Poet Laureate,.., [ and ] quince were able to find something to connect with mind as I.... Something new and fresh might reemerge have been answered only by repeated.! Ive been going into rural communities in different parts of the United States of innocence and privacy and of!, the reader, to fill in the blank has a certain flavor that just fit. And see what I can hear there of goods glad you were able to someone. Congress, right the insinuation that this is an expensive shop, she has a certain flavor that really! Filled we often want more from life than is achievable and all-in-all, okay...