I often think of a wonderful Marie Howe poem called The Star Market which begins: The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday. These are the old, the sick, the people a healthy young person might recoil from. Consider, that is, the languages and practices we have developed to exist within Western consumer markets. We are not the isolated commodity seekers that capitalism and its armed enforcers demand we become, but rather all of us must be / / Buried deep within each other (Eternity). Are they something you mostly notice cropping up in poems youve already written, or do they often enter through conscious choices like the ones you describe with Watershed and Eternity?SMITH: I tend to write and bank poems slowly for long stretches of time, and then, when I have the extended time and space, or when my questions become more urgent, I sit down to a season of intense writing. WebThis is Tracy K. Smiths America, a lyric insurrection within Donald J. Trumps. 4 (September 2018), RHINO Reviews Vol. 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. Its refreshing to hear from a Poet Laureate who holds all of these diverse concerns in her mind and in her voice, from our national tragedy to a four-year-olds refusal to eat her dinner. The poem, titled Garden of Eden begins with Smith acknowledging a profound longing for her Garden of Eden, or moreover her personal paradise. WASHINGTON SQUARE: In Ordinary Light you recall your first poem, written in grade school and titled Humor. These days much of your work deals with weighty topics, though youve said in other interviews that writing often feels joyful. 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. Purchasing food, however, leaves the speaker anxious: It was Brooklyn. Tracy K. Smith: Yeah, the sense of dark possibility rose to the surface. Curtis Fox: That was An Old Story. I dont yet know how to classify Wade in the Water. Hi Tracy, thanks for coming on the podcast. 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. I watch him bob across the intersection,Squat legs bowed in black sweatpants. I'd squint into it, or close my eyes This is my favorite feeling, something charged and electric. In June 2017, Smith was named U.S. poet laureate. This poem is pretty upsetting and kinda relatable. I know that her poems inspired some of my own, if even only in tone. 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. Places where reading series and book festivals dont usually go. SMITH: I wanted to open the book by invoking a sense of the eternal, to start with a nod to that scale. Are there particular questions you think of as driving Wade in the Water?SMITH: For me, poems, no matter how they behave, are questions. One of the women greeted me.I love you, she said. 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. And in this awful year, thats something worth giving thanks for. Articulating one would require thinking of others as more than free particles in a market or economic obstacles and opportunities. Teaching is inspiring for me. Free UK p&p Tracy K. Smith: Yeah, I think in some ways this is kind of a coming of age poem. Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018) was her fourth collection of poems. 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. SMITH: I like the way that humor exists in our lives, even in the dark and difficult moments. As for imaginative play, maybe that comes from another place. 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. the Declaration of Independence erasure). 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. In a technique that feels like the opposite of erasure, I Will Tell You the Truth about This, I Will Tell You All about It accumulates voices from African Americans enlisted in the Civil War, and also from their families. 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. But translating is a different thing altogether. Song allows us to hope for new connections: The interior sections of Smiths collection lift up others voices and names, to which she joins her own. The shoulders. Her term will be up in April of 2019. She earned a BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. 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! destroyed the lives of our (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.). 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. Its current occupant is Tracy K. Smith, who was named Poet Laureate in 2017. The point of capitalism is to get more capital, which allows you to either procure stuff (things or experiences) or just hoard the lucre, deriving a weird pleasure from that. 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. Curtis Fox: I want to get you to read one more poem. 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. I struggle a lot with interpreting metaphorical words often used by poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases. The theme music for this program comes from the Claudia Quintent. 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. She lives with her husband in Chicago. This is so brilliant, this is such a clear idea. I love you,I love you, as You flinch. Unlike a lot of other poets I was looking at, she has a certain flavor that just really fit to my taste. His arms churn the air. Take it easy. In Black life, humor helps make the unbearable bearable. On the dawning century. She didn'tKnow me, but I believed her,And a terrible new acheRolled over in my chest,Like in a room where the drapesHave been swept back. Every small want, every niggling urge. Both are longing for some kind of extra-human counterpoint to the real, the earthbound, the flawed, the finite. The feeling that we arent content with how things are in our lives can resonate with everyone I am sure. This is Tracy K. Smiths America, a lyric insurrection within Donald J. Trumps.Wade in the Water begins with the desolate luxury of the ironically titled Garden of Eden. It is set in the dawning century of the neoliberal universe, where everything is a market; the speaker is a thirtysomething New Yorker scraping out a life in the long tail of the Great Recession, a specter that looms over many poems in the collection. WebTracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, in 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. 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. 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? I also think that over the years teaching has made me a better editor of my own work. Then I felt like the poem could finally get somewhere. 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. So, when I was working on other poems in this book that were wrestling with history, I thought, oh, Ill go back to that Jefferson poem and see if I can make it right. Was there a poem or group of poems it coalesced around?SMITH: Thank you. As Auden supposedly said in conversation, you cant half-read it. I think this is a poem thats about, okay, Im just past that, and look what I can almost afford. Did writing your memoir indeed open up new space for that? Thats one reason that the poem Eternity, which is set in China and dedicated in part to Yi Lei, felt important to include in the book, because much of my own new work comes directly out of that relationship. But those things came out in this poem. NCTE, Common Core, & National Core Arts Standards. I often find that, after working on several new translations, I am driven to write. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. 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. It was so strange. Let us know what you think of this podcast. 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. Her latest book is Wade In The Water. The author of four books of poems, she received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Each ashamed of the same things: Maybe I am asking my new poems to remind me that I am one of those people, that America is one of those people. Like the letters themselves, Smiths poem is restorative. Tracy K. Smith, I hope your poem is a prophecy. Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. Smith works like a novelist, curating the national tongue. 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. But it is as if he hears, A voice in our idling engines, calling himLithe, Swift, Prince of Creation. My natural process is to try and distribute the weight of the poem across these mechanisms, but I get very excited when the poem has other plans for itself and leans more toward a rhythmic energy, or toward the rigid structure of rhyme or repetition. Henley, Sonja Johanson, RHINO Reviews Vol. I'd lug Its not that I dont like it because Ew, poetry, but rather because I just dont understand a majority of it. I watch him smile at nobody, at our trafficStopped to accommodate his slow going. 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. What a profound longing Smith: That's the only dream like that that I've had. Anyone can read what you share. For Poetry Off The Shelf, Im Curtis Fox. 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. 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. 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. Her writing contests the deeply isolating structures of capitalism by imagining self and nation as a collaborative condition, one that must be endlessly reconstructed and defended in the face of xenophobia, sexual violence, economic ruin, social anomie, and political disintegration. 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. She has also written a memoir,Ordinary Light(2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. To say that shes very goodthat her poetry is not screwing aroundis to state what has become increasingly obvious over the past decade. I just feel that sometimes they strive more to be abstract rather than deliver a coherent message. Its been something I will be sad to cease doing, and I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to go out across the country at this time in particular. My found poems behave differently, but those possibilities were somewhere in my mind as I worked. Something flickers, not fleeing your face. 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? WebSMITH: I like the way that humor exists in our lives, even in the dark and difficult moments. The first trip was to Sante Fe, New Mexico, to the Santa Fe Indian School and some neighboring pueblos, and I realized this is joy. Redress in the most humble terms: / Pomegranate, persimmon, quince!), even though the ultimate act is to be a good consumer and buy things. WebAnalyzes tracy k. smith's "life on mars" as an elegy as a whole with many poems pertaining to death and s struggle with the loss of her father. His comic jogCarries him nowhere. 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. How do imaginative play and perhaps even humor figure in your process and your poetry right now? Its been great. I also advise thesis students who are involved in producing book-length collections of poems. Some of these events have happened in large public spaces, so its been a matter of reading and then having maybe a public Q&A or more of a back and forth afterward. What is it that I could do in this role that would be different and useful. I see humor as one of the things that keeps us alive. And its a way of bearing witness to what is otherwise unspeakable. Our repeated Its about letting the unconscious mind into the process of problem-solving. I will say it flat-out: I do not like poetry. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration to bear. After you read this poem by the former U.S. sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people My thirties. Her latest book is Cast Away, from Greenwillow Books. I think the topic has also just come up much more frequently and relentlessly in the years since Trayvon Martins murder.WASHINGTON SQUARE: Another subject you grapple with in Ordinary Light is belief in God. 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. Usually only after therapy Capitalism, Fisher intones, is what is left when beliefs have collapsed at the level of ritual or symbolic elaboration, and all that is left is the consumer-spectator, trudging through the ruins and the relics.Is there any alternative to the morose conviction that nothing new can ever happen (Fisher again)? 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. Copyright 2008 - 2023 . And, for all their sagacity and poisetheir precise images and finely-crafted musicSmiths poems manage to be, too, surprising and audacious. Life on Mars is a very sentimental and intimate book of poems about how an author deals a lost in her life. 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