A poem gives me a chance to have an encounter with a feeling, with an experience, with a wish, with an idea. Tracy K. Smith More Quotes by Tracy K. Smith More Quotes From Tracy K. Smith A question is a pursuit, an invitation to envision and explore a series of possibilities, to struggle and empathize and doubt and believe. The question moves, whereas our sense of what an answer is can often be static, a stopping point. Tracy K. Smith answer struggle doubt believe I feel most alive, most electric with faith, breath, and courage, when I think of God as a current that runs through all that is. Not by will or by choice. Not as a benediction but because there are laws even God must obey. Tracy K. Smith feel faith god courage Literature allows us to be open, to listen, and to be curious. Tracy K. Smith listen us curious literature What excites me is that I'm an ambassador for poetry, which is something that I wholeheartedly believe in and that has been an anchor and a force of stability and consolation throughout my life. I think that's good news. Tracy K. Smith my-life good me life Lately, I've been thinking about the difference between poetry and prose, and as I've experienced it, poetry is insistent. It allows for images and statements to operate in a single space and resonate powerfully without the application to be elaborated upon and narrated. Tracy K. Smith single space poetry thinking My hope is to create spaces where people of all stripes can come together and speak at a lower decibel level. We make more sense that way. We sound more like our real selves that way. Tracy K. Smith speak hope together people I feel like it's a gift for any writer to be recognized like this. Tracy K. Smith i-feel-like gift feel like I work with a lot of young people who have poems that are changing their lives, that they're eager to talk about, but every now and then when I meet someone, maybe someone of my parents' generation, and I tell them that I write poetry, they'll begin to recite something that they memorized when they were in school that has never left them. Tracy K. Smith parents poetry work people We all need poetry. The moments in our lives that are characterized by language that has to do with necessity or the market, or just, you know, things that take us away from the big questions that we have, those are the things that I think urge us to think about what a poem can offer. Tracy K. Smith think you language poetry When my father died, those years when he was working on the Hubble came back to me, and it seemed fitting to imagine him as having somehow merged with the large mystery that the universe represents. Tracy K. Smith me mystery universe father I think humans have always felt watched back by whatever is out there flickering in the distance. What excites me is what the imagination creates, not simply in explanation of what is there but also to explain or justify the feeling of awe and attachment that the heavens inspire. Tracy K. Smith feeling think me imagination I don't know how anyone can see the Hubble 'Deep Field' image and not feel like something else is going about its business out there. Tracy K. Smith deep feel know business One of my main wishes in wanting to write about my mother was to explore the impact of her death on my life, explore our relationship, think about the different versions of myself that I was with and without her. I also had the really strong wish to bring her to life for my children, who were born after she was gone. Tracy K. Smith myself mother life death I love the sense of looking at the sad, paltry, and yet very familiar spectacle that we must make from moment to moment in our lives, and in our frenzy, as something that's as out there as alien life. Tracy K. Smith moment sad love life Prose is something that is persistent in staying in one place long enough to not only zero in on the dramatic effect of something that might have happened, or something that might have been seen, but also in watching how it played out and thinking about the cause and the effect. Tracy K. Smith place enough long thinking Losing my father made me want to find out if I could come up with a version of God or the afterlife that I could feel like was acceptable now that both my parents are in it. Tracy K. Smith parents me god father For years following the death of my mother, I wanted to write about her. I started writing what I thought of as personal essays about growing up as her child, but I never could finish any of them. I think I was too close to that loss, and too eager to try and resolve things, to make her death make sense. Tracy K. Smith child think mother death I had written here and there about my mother in my poems. There are poems for her in my first and second books. Tracy K. Smith her here first mother I have kept journals at different times in my life. And a lot of my early notebooks became places where I would just think on the page, trying to parse what I was feeling, to find out what I was thinking. Tracy K. Smith my-life feeling life thinking I am keenly aware that in writing about my mother, I am writing about my aunts' sister, and that in writing about my grandmother, I'm writing about their mother. I know that my honesty about how my view of these people has changed over the years may be painful. Tracy K. Smith i-am honesty mother people
