In 2014 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship. Curtis Fox: That was An Old Story. Under the intense weight of capital, this poisoned realism infects all other forms of discourse, connection, economy. to bear. 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. Heavy lifting, to be sure. I feel, just this very instant, 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 think it has to do with the joy of losing oneself in something, which is what happens when a poem is really going somewhere. WebPoems, readings, poetry news and the entire 100-year archive of POETRY magazine. Hi Tracy, thanks for coming on the podcast. Not unlike your previous books, this one feels cohesive even as it encompasses poems whose forms and concerns vary. 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. and settlement here. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration. They are places to test out new lines of inquiry. Something flickers, not fleeing your face. Its current occupant is Tracy K. Smith, who was named Poet Laureate in 2017. Tracy K. Smith: Sure. In this manner, they accumulate tools that can be put to use upon their own material. Smith and I corresponded by email about writing, reading, teaching, and her latest collection.WASHINGTON SQUARE: To start, I loved your new collection Wade in the Water. Ive been sharing work by other American poets, and readings of my own poems as well, and just asking a very simple question, which is, what do you notice? 1 No. Do these various modes of working with existing text feel similar to each other? For a long time I didnt know what to do with my interest in the Nathaniel Rich article that informs Watershed. Then, after most of the manuscript was finished, I had the idea of marrying the facts from that article, in a found poem, with the narratives of near-death-experience (NDE) survivorspeople whose vocabularies almost across the board invoke the sense of Love as an original animating force, as the logic of the universe. Lentils spilt a trail behind me 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. Tracy K. Smith: Well, Ive been going into rural communities in different parts of the country. I imagined my Civil War poem would be a one-time exploration of its time period, but when I came back a few years later to writing poetry, the concerns I found myself wrestling with were rooted in similar questions of history, race, compassion and justice. 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. 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. Smith continues that it was Brooklyn and everyone she had known was living. 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? Terrible. Poetry does not really resonate with me. Maybe I am asking my new poems to remind me that I am one of those people, that America is one of those people. Tracy K. Smith, I hope your poem is a prophecy. Her poem is an erasure poem, a form of found poetry, making it even more successful in her criticism of the original document. I honestly really enjoyed this poem, particularly the ending clause. Once, a bag of black beluga And sometimes there are things that seem to point in very different directions as a result of whats been eliminated. This poem is pretty upsetting and kinda relatable. Curtis Fox: Yeah, its one of those poems, when you read it you think God, somebody should have done this years ago. I didnt set out to write a found poem, but when I got far enough into that research, I understood that I didnt want to merely metabolize all of these other real voices and then speak something imagined or invented out in my own voice; rather, I wanted to make space for these very compelling voices to speak to a reader the ways they had spoken to me. Its not that I dont like it because Ew, poetry, but rather because I just dont understand a majority of it. We get collage, erasure, short lyrics, long sectioned pieces; speakers grapple with the Civil War, immigration, faith, environmental damage, motherhood, grocery shopping. 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. I love chicken. Consider the everyday poetics of capitalism. Tracy K. Smith: Hi, thanks for having me. Buy RHINO MagazineDonate to RHINOPoemsReviewsEvents Submissions InternshipsAbout RHINOMasthead. 4 (September 2018). Pessimism hobbles anyone who is paying attention. Leaving therapy, she feels a profound longing for the grocery store, which becomes a sort of temple where spiritual and aesthetic desire mix (The glossy pastries! 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. But it is as if he hears, A voice in our idling engines, calling himLithe, Swift, Prince of Creation. I think now, of course, I feel, and many of us feel differently about that. 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. Below you can find the poem followed by my analysis. 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. 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. I claim pension under the general law, argues one appellant; (i shall hav to send this with out a stamp / for I haint money enough to buy a stamp), another says in closing his letter to the President (all italics and spellings original).In an endnote Smith refers to such texts as erasure poems, a somewhat ironic term. 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. Incidentally, the only other poem in the book whose title was chosen well in advance of the poems composition was Eternity. I knew that I wanted to write a poem that invoked a never-ending sense of scale. Curtis Fox: Tracy K. Smith is the Poet Laureate of the United States. This is an essential book, one that should be required reading throughout the land. WebTracy K. Smith is a contemporary American poet who is born in Massachusetts. I'm glad you were able to find something to connect with! WebTracy K. Smith was born in Massachusetts and raised in northern California. WASHINGTON SQUARE: In addition to the found poems in Wade in the Water and your previous books, youve also written erasures (including an erasure of the Declaration of Independence) and translated poetry from the Chinese. Over her career, she has published a memoir and four books of poetry, including And then I said well, why dont I just look at the Declaration of Independence and see what I can hear there? What made you choose to start (and end?) the book in a spiritual key? She's also the author of a memoir, Ordinary Light, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Like the letters themselves, Smiths poem is restorative. Curtis Fox: I want to get you to read one more poem. Why are we allowing industrialized transactional regimes that make us miserable to cook the planet alive? 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. God said everything that was in that garden they could use to Curtis Fox: And what about the desolate luxury? While I labored to find It comes down to simple math.The beach belongs to none of us, regardlessof color, or money. We thought the birds were singing louder. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/magazine/poem-beatific.html. The couplet looped in my head for weeks, and when I finally resorted to Google, I learned it was from Smiths first collection, The Bodys Question.I borrowed her books from the library and found them full of lines like the ones that had hooked me. We were almost certain theywere. [1] The term queasy questions comes from John Self, the narrator of Martin Amiss novel Money (1984). Thats the emphasis in each of my workshops, though sometimes we use themes to determine the readings, or we look at a specific type of poemsay long poems or poem cyclesover the course of the term. 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. Tracy K. Smith discusses her new book and her tenure as current US poet laureate. The feeling that we arent content with how things are in our lives can resonate with everyone I am sure. 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. 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. Then animals long believed gone crept down. I thought of to bear witness, as the book itself does, but I also thought to bear unspeakable suffering. Her 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. He has Purchasing food, however, leaves the speaker anxious: It was Brooklyn. 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. 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. And in this awful year, thats something worth giving thanks for. Curtis Fox:So how did that translate into what you have done, or what you are doing as Poet Laureate? The conversations that can ensue after weve sat together listening to poems that have activated some of our own private urgencies, are useful. taken Captive Was there a poem or group of poems it coalesced around?SMITH: Thank you. 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. Then, after the creation of poems winds down, I get practical and try to clarify, amplify, trim and arrange to the most powerful effect. 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. I was dreaming that I was reading aloud a mural that had been made of a Carl Phillips poem, when suddenly my waking mind broke in to say: Thats not a Carl Phillips poembut if you write it down it can be yours! I woke up and struggled to remember and reconstruct the lines Id read in the dream. In October, Graywolf Press will I think this is a poem thats about, okay, Im just past that, and look what I can almost afford. Brought on a different manner of weather. Id squint into it and let it slam me in the face-- the known sun setting on the dawning century really stuck with me. What made you decide to use collage rather than writing something inspired by the archives? Even going into the first trip, I was thinking okay, Im performing a service. 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. The pedestrian sees himself one way hears his own music in those engines idling for him but who doesnt? Wade in the Water is, wonderfully, a Poet Laureates booka book that speaks for the poet herself and for us all, at a perilous moment in our history. Each ashamed of the same things: This was the shattered promise of Reconstruction, which collapsed under the weight of reactionary white politics (and outright terrorism) by the late 1870s. How do imaginative play and perhaps even humor figure in your process and your poetry right now? And I guess in some ways thats a scary place to be. Still so nave as to stand squared, erect, Impervious facing the window open. Articulating one would require thinking of others as more than free particles in a market or economic obstacles and opportunities. Tracy K. Smith: Yeah, I think in some ways this is kind of a coming of age poem. 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. As Auden supposedly said in conversation, you cant half-read it. On the dawning century. For But it also became a poem about reckoning with what it means to be alive in the 21st century. Parenting is such an intimate experience, but we have all been parented and many of us have struggled through these moments when our childrens voices trumpeting their separate identities are both miracle and monumental challenge. I had the same problem choosing my poet. Not the liberal version, where everything naturally progresses toward a better reality, but something more ambiguous and fragile. 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. Her translations of poetry by Yves Bonnefoy include Words in Stone and The Origin of Language. Perhaps stepping into that subject matter imparted a courageor simply a vocabulary and an awarenessthat hasnt vanished. 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? And if you enjoy that, I highly recommend checking out Life on Mars is a very sentimental and intimate book of poems about how an author deals a lost in her life. At the same time, several shorter poems contain a lyric I observing a stranger (for example, Beatific and Charity). Tracy K. Smith: I hear those two things, but in the reverse order. 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. Or next to nothing and drops it in the chute. 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. 1 No. It was Brooklyn. 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? Tracy K. Smith: Sure. Her latest book is Cast Away, from Greenwillow Books. 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. 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. Actually, the first poem in Wade in the Water, its called Garden of Eden and it is shockingly about shopping, in a sense. So the poems change for me too, which is I think affirmation that something real is happening. His arms churn the air. 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. Its not that I dont like it because Ew, poetry, but rather because I just dont understand a majority of it. Curtis Fox: So I wanted to ask you about your time as Poet Laureate, but before we get there, Id like to get straight to a poem. I felt like my sonnet was off, I always felt like there was something I needed to fix in the last couple of lines of that poem. Capital exerts its violence against nature and the people who are part of it. SMITH: I wanted to open the book by invoking a sense of the eternal, to start with a nod to that scale. 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 just feel that sometimes they strive more to be abstract rather than deliver a coherent message. 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. From a handbasket filled I struggle a lot with interpreting metaphorical words often used by poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases. Thanks for listening. Curtis Fox: Now, if the Trump presidency has told us anything, its that racism is alive and well in America. Did the poems you wrote after doing that translation feel stylistically or thematically influenced by Yi Leis work? 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? 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. Her latest book is Wade In The Water. Her work travels the world and takes on its voices; brings history and The glossy pastries! Tracy K. Smith served as U.S. poet laureate from 2017-19 and teaches at Princeton University. The Garden of Eden is a semiautobiographical account based on Hemingways honeymoon with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, in May, 1927, at Le Grau-du-Roi, a fishing village in the Carmargue, on the Mediterranean coast of France. I found two books that really had a powerful impact upon me: Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau Files, edited by Elizabeth A. Regosin and Donald R. Shaffer; and Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era, edited by Ira Berlin and Leslie S. Rowland. I often find that, after working on several new translations, I am driven to write. Her last collection was Tracing the Lines(Brick Road Poetry Press, 2013). I chose the title Watershed even before the poem itself had been written. In my earlier work, persona poems have been a tool by which Ive sought to learn something about some other experience or perspective that is remote from my own. 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. 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. Take it easy. 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