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). A two-time Hambidge fellow, her poems have appeared in such publications as Little Star, Prairie Schooner, december, American Life in Poetry andVerse Daily. 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. Curtis Fox: So I wanted to ask you about your time as Poet Laureate, but before we get there, Id like to get straight to a poem. Her latest book is Cast Away, from Greenwillow Books. Tracy K. Smith served as U.S. poet laureate from 2017-19 and teaches at Princeton University. What are you really getting at there? The same desolate luxury, And youre leaving it to us, the reader, to fill in the blank. Places where reading series and book festivals dont usually go. Home on Earth - Review of Tracy K. Smith's "Wade in The Water" 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. 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. This was the shattered promise of Reconstruction, which collapsed under the weight of reactionary white politics (and outright terrorism) by the late 1870s. This is so brilliant, this is such a clear idea. I love the ways their other academic pursuits sometimes surface in their poems. The Garden of Eden is a semiautobiographical account based on Hemingways honeymoon with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, in May, 1927, at Le Grau I think its because i'm not very artistic that it doesn't come so easy. I discovered Tracy K. Smiths work early in my first year of college. WebSMITH: I like the way that humor exists in our lives, even in the dark and difficult moments. 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. Capitalism is the enemy and the stakes are high, because one of the only defenses against the degradations of our market-driven culture is to cleave to language that fosters humility, awareness of complexity, commitment to the lives of others and a resistance to the overly easy and the patently false.Embedded in all this is a specific conception of history. 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. 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). 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. 4 (September 2018), RHINO Reviews Vol. 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. They do a lot to remind us that we do have things to say to each other, that were interested in one anothers lives and vulnerabilities. / We never left the room. Aside from that, I like your analysis of the poem. I wanted to draw-in the sense of the living spirit at the heart of that nights encounter, and at the heart of the tradition of the ring shout itself: the sense of love and deliverance, of faith and compassion, of justice and survival.Watershed was a poem I knew I wanted to write. I watch him smile at nobody, at our trafficStopped to accommodate his slow going. 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. That work is something I can do when I dont have any ideas for poems, and it draws me into conversation with another poetic sensibility. He has It teases us; it helps us sometimes, so that what is happening now feels like it has already occurred once before; it bridles adults and happily submits to being largely ignored by children. 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. The store is called Garden Of Eden, so almost accidentally it aligns itself with those poems that are thinking back to those biblical stories. You were appointed Poet Laureate in 2017, after Trump was inaugurated. In 2014 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship. WebTracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. Wade in the Water by Tracy K Smith is published by Penguin (8.99). Smith works like a novelist, curating the national tongue. Tracy K. Smith served as U.S. poet laureate from 2017-19 and teaches at Princeton University. 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. Where I seldom shopped, 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. The narrow untouched hips. He put the two of them in a garden where they did not have to provide for themselves. There is deep unease in those lines that Ive been puzzling over, and why would somebody be ashamed of innocence and privacy? And that stage, I want to think of it as a stage that America has gone through. The conversations that can ensue after weve sat together listening to poems that have activated some of our own private urgencies, are useful. The way you can break into laughter remembering something while at a funeral, say, and We'll love you just the way you are if you're perfect. Although the last section of the book includes poems with a similarly wide lens, Smith also evokes small moments with her children. 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. 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. 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. Like a lot. 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. WebTracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. 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. Garden 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, Brought on a different manner of weather. We spoke of this, when we spoke, if we spoke, on our zoom screensor in the backyard with our podfolk. I struggle a lot with interpreting metaphorical words often used by poets and underlying meanings behind small phrases. But it also became a poem about reckoning with what it means to be alive in the 21st century. Heavy lifting, to be sure. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration. At the same time, several shorter poems contain a lyric I observing a stranger (for example, Beatific and Charity). The ones / Whose wealth is a kind of filth. Lest this ecological connection seem like a stretch, know that environmental disaster haunts Wade in the Water. Its current occupant is Tracy K. Smith, who was named Poet Laureate in 2017. The author is efficient in pointing out that the men that once wrote and fought for equality, were the same to enforce and bring upon laws that oppressed Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018) was her fourth collection of poems. Its a dire poem, tinged with hope, that out of the destruction of our century something new and fresh might reemerge. In this book, Im doing that more relentlessly. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith (1972-), listen to her read it here. Curtis Fox: That was An Old Story. Tracy K. Smith, "Dusk" from Wade in the Water. In this manner, they accumulate tools that can be put to use upon their own material. WebSummary Semi-Splendid by Tracy K. Smith explores an argument from two perspectives.Both perspectives come from Smith, yet one is from a nice perspective, in which the poet typically just allows her boyfriend to win the argument, and the other perspective focuses on this moment, in which she stands up for herself and begins to Hi Tracy, thanks for coming on the podcast. Tracy K. Smith, I hope your poem is a prophecy. I will say it flat-out: I do not like poetry. Its not that I dont like it because Ew, poetry, but rather because I just dont understand a majority of it. Free UK p&p Jesus also loved the foolish, the pushy, the stubborn, the fickle. Tracy K. Smith was born in Massachusetts and raised in northern California. Film awards like the Oscars often have a best-animated film category, and this is dumb. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Thats fascinating! Why are we allowing industrialized transactional regimes that make us miserable to cook the planet alive? In October, Graywolf Press will Curtis Fox: The poem ends with an erasure, it ends ambiguously, taken Captive / on the high Seas / to bear as you just read, and its with a dash there at the end. and was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon Tracy. I know its a huge honor, and thats the first thing that I felt when Dr Hayden called me. Whatwhat on earthconstitutes a meaningful life in a market society?Markets shape mindsets. 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. It would mean giving space to voices that have long been silenced or distorted. 1 No. 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. I dont yet know how to classify Wade in the Water. 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. All Rights Reserved. sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our, In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for. In June 2017, Smith was named U.S. poet laureate. 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. So I thought, what could I do? The Garden of Eden is a semiautobiographical account based on Hemingways honeymoon with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, in May, 1927, at Le Grau-du-Roi, a fishing village in the Carmargue, on the Mediterranean coast of France. Tracy K. Smith: Yeah, the sense of dark possibility rose to the surface. the Declaration of Independence erasure). 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. Then I felt like the poem could finally get somewhere. Bank-balance math and counting days. 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. 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. Take it easy. Tracy K. Smith: I hear those two things, but in the reverse order. I had the same problem choosing my poet. Her work travels the world and takes on its voices; brings history and Can you tell us how you composed the poem Declaration? But that isnt enough, and so I am also listening for clues in the sounds of what I have already said that might help me determine what to say next. 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. 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. Even a simple poem like The Good Life grew large, for me at least,when the image of a woman journeying for water from a village without a well arrived. This poem is pretty upsetting and kinda relatable. sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people Her term will be up in April of 2019. And for that to be unmitigated. WebTracy K. Smith is a contemporary American poet who is born in Massachusetts. Our repeated 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. Curtis Fox: Tracy K. Smith is the Poet Laureate of the United States. At the time, I wasnt writing many poems; I was working on my prose memoir, and feeling, somewhat guiltily, that it might be a good idea to take the opportunity to produce a new poem. (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.). Some do a lot, some very little. Still so nave as to stand squared, erect, Impervious facing the window open. We get collage, erasure, short lyrics, long sectioned pieces; speakers grapple with the Civil War, immigration, faith, environmental damage, motherhood, grocery shopping. 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. Born in Massachusetts and raised in northern California, Smith now lives in New Jersey, where she directs and teaches in Princeton University's Creative Writing Program. Usually only after therapy Over her career, she has published a memoir and four books of poetry, including Life On Mars, which won the Pulitzer Prize several years ago. I felt like my sonnet was off, I always felt like there was something I needed to fix in the last couple of lines of that poem. Was there a poem or group of poems it coalesced around?SMITH: Thank you. This is a poem thats kind of looking back toward the moment when we might have known but didnt care. Home the paper bags, doing We were then asked to form an opinion on the meaning and significance of the poem. Did the poems you wrote after doing that translation feel stylistically or thematically influenced by Yi Leis work? 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. Maybe what I really want to know is what stands between us and such a possibility. I think we have reached a moment where we need new myths.WASHINGTON SQUARE: The titles and cover art of your two most recent collections suggest a sort of pairing: Life on Mars, with its image of the Cone Nebula, points to the cosmic, while Wade in the Water presents as more earthbound. SMITH: I think of my four books of poems in similar terms: The Bodys Question feels to me like a coming-of-age story. The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. A tea they refused to carry. How do you feel now about taking up race in your poetry? the book in a spiritual key? Lentils spilt a trail behind me How do imaginative play and perhaps even humor figure in your process and your poetry right now? 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. 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). 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 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. Analyzes how the first poem in the book sums up the primary focus of the works in its exploration of loss, grieving, and recovery. Whats going on there? Tracy K. Smith discusses her new book and her tenure as current US poet laureate. She comes home with her paper bags and looks at the numbers to her name and it ultimately slam[s] [her] in the face; she perceives a life of luxury and craves more from life than that of which she can afford. 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. And let it slam me in the face 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. 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. 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. Copyright 2008 - 2023 . After all, it supposedly makes nothing happen, according to Auden (indeed, imagine a poem changing President Trumps mind on immigration), and it is the literary form for which capitalism has the least use, judging by its small contemporary readership.But poetry that tries to represent individual subjectivity is well positioned to depict life under capitalism and to render possible post- or anti-capitalist alternatives. Not only that, several poems were originally written for separate projects: museum exhibitions, an NPR broadcast, an academic conference. Actually, the first poem in Wade in the Water, its called Garden of Eden and it is shockingly about shopping, in a sense. Just dont understand a majority of it as a stage that America has gone through voices brings. Struggle a lot with interpreting metaphorical words often used by Poets and underlying behind! By Penguin ( 8.99 ) RHINO garden of eden tracy k smith analysis Vol because I just dont understand a of... 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