I know that in a poem, even when the speaker is speaking from the poet's experience, there's always something that's borrowed, some authority that sits outside of the poet that the poem has claimed. There's a dramatic pitch that makes the speaker capable of saying something more courageous or stranger or simply other than what the poet would be able to say.

Tracy K. Smith

Categorized in : Would Be Able Courageous

So much of my poetry begins with something that I can describe in visual terms, so thinking about distance, thinking about how life begins and what might be watching us.

Tracy K. Smith

distance might thinking

I think tension between the intimate and the vast is at the heart of every poem by any poet, though of course the terms with which it is explored vary. Perhaps it is something we seek out in order to affirm that our small lives are tethered to something large and ongoing.

Tracy K. Smith

heart order thinking

Joy is a part of my process. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that poetry, as a practice, necessitates a sense of joy. It's exhilarating to come into contact with the things we write into being. And a real sense of play and abandon even when we are relying on hard-won technique, and even when the aim is deadly serious. How often do we get the excuse to stop, think, and then stop thinking altogether and try to listen to what sits behind our outside of our thoughts? Poets are lucky.

Tracy K. Smith

real writing thinking

Often it is a moment rather than an event that makes a poem.

Tracy K. Smith

events poetry moments

Once I started writing all the time and interacting with poets, I made a conscious decision to identify myself as a poet. It's funny how much a single word can provide focus and direction. As soon as I claimed that identity, I started clearing more and more space for poetry in my life and applying poetic tools to other areas of my life. The world became a different place, and I witnessed it through different kinds of eyes.

Tracy K. Smith

space eye writing

We are here for what amounts to a few/hours,/a day at most./We feel around making sense of the terrain,/our own new limbs,/Bumping up against a herd of bodies/until one becomes home./Moments sweep past. The grass bends/then learns again to stand.

Tracy K. Smith

body home past

Everything that disappears/Disappears as if returning somewhere

Tracy K. Smith

disappear ifs

time never stops, but does it end? and how many livesbefore take-off, before we find ourselves beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?

Tracy K. Smith

ends gold doe

I've been beating my head all day long on the same six lines.

Tracy K. Smith

lines six long

Keetje Kuipers' poems are daring, formally beautiful and driven by rich imagery and startling ideas.

Tracy K. Smith

rich beautiful ideas

For me, a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit.

Tracy K. Smith

kind opportunity littles

Poems infatuated with their own smarts and detached from any emotional grounding can leave the reader feeling lonely, empty and ashamed for having expected more. Like icy adolescents, such poetry is more interested in commiserating than acknowledging that feelings — the sentiments that make us susceptible to sentimentality — actually exist.

Tracy K. Smith

smart emotional lonely

History, with its hard spine & dog-eared Corners, will be replaced with nuance, Just like the dinosaurs gave way To mounds and mounds of ice.

Tracy K. Smith

ice dog history

When I was young, my father was lord Of a small kingdom: a wife, a garden, Kids for whom his word was Word. It took years for my view to harden, To shrink him to human size.

Tracy K. Smith

garden father kids

I feel like the older I get, the truer it feels that I'm only going have an investment in a poem if it allows or forces me to bring something that's supremely me onto the page. I used to think that the speaker of a poem was talking to someone else, to some ideal reader or listener, but now I think that speakers - poets - are talking to themselves. The poem allows you to pose questions that you have you ask of yourself knowing that they are unanswerable.

Tracy K. Smith

knowing talking thinking

Lizzie Harris's debut collection, Stop Wanting, crafts images and lines of such arresting splendor that I am very often driven to joy at the feats of beauty and healing that language is capable of bringing into being.

Tracy K. Smith

splendor healing joy

If I call it pain, and try to touch it With my hands, my own life, It lies still and the music thins, A pulse felt for through garments.

Tracy K. Smith

pain lying hands

I grew up in northern California in a town called Fairfield, which is kind of exactly between San Francisco and Sacramento, a small suburb. And I'm the youngest of five children.

Tracy K. Smith

san-francisco california children

Brooklyn is kind of my writer's retreat.

Tracy K. Smith

brooklyn retreat kind

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