It is what I instinctively turn to when the idea or statement-muscle stalls during the writing process (which is early-in). Curtis Fox: Yeah, its one of those poems, when you read it you think God, somebody should have done this years ago. In October, Graywolf Press will Are there particular questions you think of as driving Wade in the Water?SMITH: For me, poems, no matter how they behave, are questions. 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. 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 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. 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. L.I. Someone has likened it to the poem in my previous book called The Good Life which is about being so hungry, and having a job but not making enough money. 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. But those things came out in this poem. / Pomegranate, persimmon, quince!), even though the ultimate act is to be a good consumer and buy things. the same desolate luxury, people lived paycheck to paycheck, unable to afford such luxuries like exotic fruits or pastries. So I had to kind of really think about it, before saying yes. WebGarden of Eden story: summary 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 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 guess I was really thinking about the moment when our desire to be public people became such a ravenous appetite. Jill: That's a really cool origin story. 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. Unlike a lot of other poets I was looking at, she has a certain flavor that just really fit to my taste. A tea they refused to carry. SMITH: I think the only way students learn how to craft their own poems is by reading and learning to pay close attention to the specific choices that other writers make. 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? 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. What do you try to impart as a teacher, and what, if anything, has teaching poetry taught you about writing it? Among her current projects is Self-Portraits,a chapbook collection of ekphrastic poems focused on women artists. The last lines of the poems final section point this up with staggering intensity: My full name is Dick Lewis Barnett.I am the applicant for pensionon account of having servedunder the name Lewis Smithwhich was the name I wore beforethe days of slavery were overMy correct name is Hiram Kirkland.Some persons call me Harry and others call me Henrybut neither is my correct name. Dang, you hear those birds? Im talking about the many products, services, networks, trends, apps, tools, toys, as well as the drugs and devices for remedying their effects that are pitched to us nonstop: in our browser sidebars, in the pages of print media, embedded in movies and TV shows, on airplanes, in taxis and trains and even toilet stalls. We get collage, erasure, short lyrics, long sectioned pieces; speakers grapple with the Civil War, immigration, faith, environmental damage, motherhood, grocery shopping. But translating is a different thing altogether. The opening poems of Wade in the Water seem to locate the divine in the worldly, sometimes to humorous effect: God drives around in a jeep, and the Garden of Eden turns out to be a grocery store. 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. Can I get you to read An Old Story? The glossy pastries! NCTE, Common Core, & National Core Arts Standards. Her poem is an erasure poem, a form of found poetry, making it even more successful in her criticism of the original document. For Poetry Off The Shelf, Im Curtis Fox. In June 2017, Smith was named U.S. poet laureate. I will say it flat-out: I do not like poetry. Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. She has also written a memoir,Ordinary Light(2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. 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. My found poems behave differently, but those possibilities were somewhere in my mind as I worked. Because having them suggests a sense of unearned privilege? Its a dire poem, tinged with hope, that out of the destruction of our century something new and fresh might reemerge. Many of the poems focus on history, whether spiritual or political. Its current occupant is Tracy K. Smith, who was named Poet Laureate in 2017. Copyright 2018 by Tracy K. Smith. 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. 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. Under the intense weight of capital, this poisoned realism infects all other forms of discourse, connection, economy. Teaching is inspiring for me. The Garden of Eden is a semiautobiographical account based on Hemingways honeymoon with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, in May, 1927, at Le Grau My thirties.Everyone I knew was livingThe same desolate luxury,Each ashamed of the same things:Innocence and privacy. 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. Bouncing balls, the kind that lifts nothing. Tracy K. Smith: Yeah, I think in some ways this is kind of a coming of age poem. I also think that over the years teaching has made me a better editor of my own work. Her latest book is Cast Away, from Greenwillow Books. 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? In this book, Im doing that more relentlessly. 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. Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018) was her fourth Tracy K. Smith, "Dusk" from Wade in the Water. Poems, like movies, are good at indulging this wish. Those banked poems help me get started, but inevitably the work generated during that intense period is characterized by recurring themes, images, vocabulary, and obsessions. At the same time, several shorter poems contain a lyric I observing a stranger (for example, Beatific and Charity). 1 No. 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. WebGarden of Eden By Tracy K. Smith What a profound longing I feel, just this very instant, For the Garden of Eden On Montague Street Where I seldom shopped, Usually only after therapy Elbow sore at the crook From a handbasket filled To capacity. 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. She's also the author of a memoir, Ordinary Light, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. But I truly hope its more than that. I also advise thesis students who are involved in producing book-length collections of poems. For the Garden of Eden Buy RHINO MagazineDonate to RHINOPoemsReviewsEvents Submissions InternshipsAbout RHINOMasthead. Even going into the first trip, I was thinking okay, Im performing a service. I was blown away by how it seemed to capture the mood of our historical moment. I honestly really enjoyed this poem, particularly the ending clause. We often want more from life than is achievable and all-in-all, thats okay. She earned a BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. One quick way to define capitalism is to observe that it entails the dedication of all things, all human objects and ideas and actions, to profit, to the continual accumulation of wealth in private hands. Capitalism has made a nightmare world, and we can either resist its pressures or chill with our smartphones and wait for climate change to kill us.Along comes Tracy K. Smiths new book, Wade in the Water (Graywolf). 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. 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. Looking back, do you have a sense of your writerly evolution across your books? Poetry does not really resonate with me. SMITH: Writing Ordinary Light helped me break my own silence about how race has shaped me. The opening and closing poems refer to the most familiar Biblical stories. Id squint into it and let it slam me in the face-- the known sun setting on the dawning century really stuck with me. Thanks for listening. Life On Mars By Tracy K. Smith Analysis. RHINO Poetry is supported in part by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, Poets &Writers, Inc, The Poetry Foundation, and by The MacArthur Funds for Arts and Culture at The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. What about you? Curtis Fox: Now you hinted at it, but its an erasure poem. Also, one of the strangest I think, because the role of the Poet Laureate is largely defined by the poet occupying that perch. 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. Each ashamed of the same things: I thought of to bear witness, as the book itself does, but I also thought to bear unspeakable suffering. In 2014 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship. 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. Too late. I think the title, which came after Id finished the poem, enlarged the initial scope of the poem. Tracy K. Smith discusses her new book and her tenure as current US poet laureate. The something climbs, leaps, isFalling now across us like the prank of an icy, brainyLord. I am thunderstruck by the human care of these last lines. 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. Can you tell us how you composed the poem Declaration? to bear. Free UK p&p https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/magazine/poem-beatific.html. Sort of the innocence of consumerism before bad things happen. Let us know what you think of this podcast. She earned a BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. 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. And I guess in some ways thats a scary place to be. 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. 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). Consider the everyday poetics of capitalism. Her latest book is Wade In The Water. 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. If we are moving through Time, I suspect Time is moving, too, though who knows where it is heading? 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. 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. Life on Mars is a very sentimental and intimate book of poems about how an author deals a lost in her life. 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. But even, it seemed to answer some of the questions that come up when we talk about this racial divide. 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? And I love how Wright allows the text of her various speakers to become a kind of chorus. Brought on a different manner of weather. 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. 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. What a profound longing 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. 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. Tracy K. Smith: Sure. Tracy K. Smith served as U.S. poet laureate from 2017-19 and teaches at Princeton University. I see humor as one of the things that keeps us alive. I will say it flat-out: I do not like poetry. How did you fill in that blank as you were writing that? A sense of regret that I hadnt perhaps actively articulated to myself found a way into the poem. The theme music for this program comes from the Claudia Quintent. Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018) was her fourth collection of poems. Curtis Fox: Tracy K. Smith is the Poet Laureate of the United States. Wade in the Water in particular enlists a whole chorus of voices, including historical ones resurrected almost verbatim in collages and erasures. Would you read it for us? Smith continues that it was Brooklyn and everyone she had known was living. Curtis Fox: I want to get you to read one more poem. 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? If we laugh at it, it has less power over us. Im really happy I stumbled upon Tracy K. Smith and I look forward to reading more of her work. Curtis Fox: So this poem is set in pre-Facebook times. Can you explain exactly what that means in terms of what you did with the Declaration of Independence? (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.). 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. And then we find a way to have a conversation. 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. 1 No. 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). And Life on Mars attempts to confront being human. I also agree. She lives with her husband in Chicago. Like a lot. I'd squint into it, or close my eyes Bank-balance math and counting days. 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. 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. Her SMITH: The books have a lot in common. 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. Educated at Harvard and Columbia, teaching at Princeton, named the US Poet Laureate in 2017, and already freighted with laurels (her previous book, Life on Mars, won the 2012 Pulitzer), Smith is no undiscovered talent. Tinged with hope, that out of the questions that come up when we talk about this divide! But those possibilities were somewhere in my mind as I worked you in! 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