I see humor as one of the things that keeps us alive. Both are longing for some kind of extra-human counterpoint to the real, the earthbound, the flawed, the finite. Wade in the Water begins with the desolate luxury of the ironically titled Garden of I love you,I love you, as You flinch. Was there a poem or group of poems it coalesced around?SMITH: Thank you. Curtis Fox: That was An Old Story. 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. the book in a spiritual key? on the high Seas When she writes about love and desire, they are vehicles for the philosophical examination of humanity, of the ways we respond to authority, and more and more they are vehicles for thinking about the plight of the earth. It was no longer important or necessary, and I wanted to just listen to these fragments within this founding document, and feel the sort of startled andI dont know, just a sense of inevitability that those statements kind of gathered around themselves. rife with music, rhyme, and repetition. WebTracy K. Smith is a contemporary American poet who is born in Massachusetts. WebThis is Tracy K. Smiths America, a lyric insurrection within Donald J. Trumps. 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. Register now and publish your best poems or read and bookmark your favorite popular famous poems. She does something trickier and more important: her work conjures up, with vivid particularity, at the level of the individual, what it is like to live under late capitalism. 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. 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. 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? The collections final poem, An Old Story, also feels faintly Biblical. We get collage, erasure, short lyrics, long sectioned pieces; speakers grapple with the Civil War, immigration, faith, environmental damage, motherhood, grocery shopping. In October, Graywolf Press will Throughout her career, she has been awarded numerous literary awards and fellowships. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/magazine/poem-beatific.html. But those things came out in this poem. I'd squint into it, or close my eyes Under the intense weight of capital, this poisoned realism infects all other forms of discourse, connection, economy. 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. How did the book come together and find its shape? Free UK p&p And maybe thats me speaking as someone in mid life, someone whos the parent of kids and has fears about the future. ravaged our Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. 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. We were almost certain theywere. I chose the wrong there are ways to hold pain like night follows daynot knowing how tomorrow went down.it hurts like never when the always is now,the now that time won't allow.there is no manner of tomorrow, nor shape of todayonly like always having My brother still bites his nails to the quick,but lately hes been allowing them to grow.So much hurt is forgotten with the horizonas backdrop. How did you arrive at the title, and what do you hope it suggests or encapsulates for readers?While working on the book, I had the experience of attending a ring shout and feeling so deeply moved and shaken by the performance of Wade in the Water. After that evening, I suspected that Wade in the Water was going to be the title of my book. God said everything that was in that garden they could use to 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. 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. 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. 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. SMITH: I like the way that humor exists in our lives, even in the dark and difficult moments. Susanna Langs newest collection of poems,Travel Notes from the River Styx,was released in summer 2017 from Terrapin Books. Usually only after therapy Let us know what you think of this podcast. 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. 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. I dont yet know how to classify Wade in the Water. I think it urges the viewer to submit to the terms and values of the subjects rather than cling to any pre-existing sense of what dignity or autonomy ought to look like. 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. 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. An Old Story is born out of the wish to write a new myth. Curtis Fox: So thats the opening poem in your book, and as you said, its set in the early years of the century when the poet was more {innocence}, but there are hints that all is not well, and you write Everyone I knew was living / The same desolate luxury, / Each ashamed of the same things: / Innocence and privacy. Then animals long believed gone crept down. 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. And for that to be unmitigated. And, for all their sagacity and poisetheir precise images and finely-crafted musicSmiths poems manage to be, too, surprising and audacious. 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 continues that it was Brooklyn and everyone she had known was living. Tracy K. Smith: Sure. 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. WebMy maker says this poem reminds him of the little groceries and bodegas of his onetime New York neighborhood. and settlement here. Id squint into it, or close my eyes / And let it slam me in the face / The known sun setting / On the dawning century. And then theres that line in Eternity: as though all of us must be / Buried deep within each other. How does poetry foreground or grapple with distinctions between the self and others? / We never left the room. Yes, these are black voices that have been effaced from history, buried in government archives and exhumed by a few scholars on whose work Smith draws. Email us at [emailprotected], or write a review in Apple Podcasts, and please link to this episode on social media. We'll love you just the way you are if you're perfect. Every least leaf, Shivers in the sun, while we sit, bothered,Late, captive to this thing commanding. Its not that I dont like it because Ew, poetry, but rather because I just dont understand a majority of it. It comes down to simple math.The beach belongs to none of us, regardlessof color, or money. We thought the birds were singing louder. In fact, I think I picked up the pace on my own new poems, and wrote the bulk of Wade in the Water, precisely because of my work on Yi Leis poems. Race is one of the chief subjects of Wade in the Water, a site wherein my wish to contemplate the elusive nature of compassion gets played out. 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. WebGarden of Eden 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 An elegy to your mother in The Bodys Question ends with the lines, We sat in that room until the wood was spent. For Smith, this is a lavish shop that seems to be selling a very specific selection of goods. The story of that poem is that it woke me up one night. Can you explain exactly what that means in terms of what you did with the Declaration of Independence? Even going into the first trip, I was thinking okay, Im performing a service. For Poetry Off The Shelf, Im Curtis Fox. The way you can break into laughter remembering something while at a funeral, say, and 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. WebTracy K. Smith begins her poem The Good Life with a subordinate clause: Whenpeople talk (Line 1). Curtis Fox: So please give that a read if you would. The something climbs, leaps, isFalling now across us like the prank of an icy, brainyLord. to bear. The narrow untouched hips. The theme music for this program comes from the Claudia Quintent. 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. I thought of to bear witness, as the book itself does, but I also thought to bear unspeakable suffering. Its current occupant is Tracy K. Smith, who was named Poet Laureate in 2017. The poem, titled Garden of Eden begins with Smith acknowledging a profound longing for her Garden of Eden, or moreover her personal paradise. Once, a bag of black beluga We spoke of this, when we spoke, if we spoke, on our zoom screensor in the backyard with our podfolk. Life on Mars is a very sentimental and intimate book of poems about how an author deals a lost in her life. SMITH: Writing the found poems feels more like writing a poem of my own than anything else. I love the things my students are willing to learn, and the risks they are willing to take with their poems. Its actually the last poem in your book. Though its not like we have much of choice. Heavy lifting, to be sure. 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. Several poems in Wade in the Water were written after translating poems of hers called In the Distance and Green Trees Greet the Rainstorm.WASHINGTON SQUARE: Section III of Wade in the Water ends with a Political Poem: a vision of workers cutting grass and communicating intermittently by raising their arms. Its current occupant is Tracy K. Smith, who was named Poet Laureate in 2017. In this manner, they accumulate tools that can be put to use upon their own material. On June 14, 2017, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced the appointment of Tracy K. Smith as the 22nd Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Pessimism hobbles anyone who is paying attention. Tracy K. Smith has her head in the stars. 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. 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. That sometimes comes out in revision, as was the case with Ash. The poem was little more than a list of ideas until I was able to sit down and hear a set of rhythmic parameters begin to assert force. 1 No. Or, generally, have some personae in your work been more challenging to access than others?SMITH: Sometimes, as in the case ofThe United States Welcomes You,a persona is a last resort. In this book, Im doing that more relentlessly. 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. Henley, Sonja Johanson, RHINO Reviews Vol. 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. 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. Curtis Fox: Being Poet Laureate is obviously an honor, but have you enjoyed it? I like the way that project emphasizes that the various speakers and photo subjects have chosen to not only share parts of their own stories, but also decided how theyd like to be photographed. For the Garden of Eden Brought on a different manner of weather. Did that effect the way that you thought about what you were going to do as Poet Laureate? Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org. Weve come to, I dont know The things that felt so new are no longer new and maybe we feel a sense of their dark possibility, or at least I do. It was Brooklyn. In Black life, humor helps make the unbearable bearable. I honestly really enjoyed this poem, particularly the ending clause. Her term will be up in April of 2019. How does Political Poem complement and converse with the books more overtly, explicitly political poems? Something flickers, not fleeing your face. In June 2017, Smith was named U.S. poet laureate. Smith: That's the only dream like that that I've had. Curtis Fox: This is Poetry Off The Shelf from The Poetry Foundation. 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. 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. Her book,Life on Mars(2011), won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She joins me now from Princeton University, where she teaches creative writing. 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 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. Curtis Fox: Its one of the curiosities of your book, that to grapple with this dawning century you go back into history with poems in the voices of the enslaved and powerless, and you also make interesting use of the Declaration of Independence. Her WebThe assignment consisted of reading this newly published poem and then writing an analysis. WebTracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. They let you move back and forth, slowing things down or speeding them up in an attempt to get a fuller, more satisfying view. Why are we allowing industrialized transactional regimes that make us miserable to cook the planet alive? / Pomegranate, persimmon, quince!), even though the ultimate act is to be a good consumer and buy things. Teaching is inspiring for me. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration. I also think that over the years teaching has made me a better editor of my own work. 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. 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. K Smith. Still so nave as to stand squared, erect, Impervious facing the window open. I will say it flat-out: I do not like poetry. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Across all four of your collections, many poems speak through personae. Our repeated He put the two of them in a garden where they did not have to provide for themselves. The analysis was to consist of identifying poetic devices and explaining how and why Tracy K. Smith used them. But I truly hope its more than that. Its not that I dont like it because Ew, poetry, but rather because I just dont understand a majority of it. 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. Title notwithstanding, the poem doesnt feel ostentatiously politicalcertainly not compared to some of its neighbors (e.g. We often want more from life than is achievable and all-in-all, thats okay. 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. It is what I instinctively turn to when the idea or statement-muscle stalls during the writing process (which is early-in). Do you enjoy it? 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