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" 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
Me
Losing
Parents
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" One of poetry's great effects, through its emphasis upon feeling, association, music, and image - things we recognize and respond to even before we understand why - is to guide us toward the part of ourselves so deeply buried that it borders upon the collective. "
Tracy K. Smith
Why
Us
Poetry
" I know my curiosity as a writer and as a person makes me really interested in moving to parts of the country that I haven't explored through writers' festivals or through the kind of campus visits that I do on a regular basis and engaging with people who may be readers of poetry and may not. "
Tracy K. Smith
People
Moving
Me
" You want a poem to unsettle something. There's a deep and interesting kind of troubling that poems do, which is to say, 'This is what you think you're certain of, and I'm going to show you how that's not enough. There's something more that might be even more rewarding if you're willing to let go of what you already know.' "
Tracy K. Smith
Know
Say
Interesting
" Brooklyn is kind of my writer's retreat. "
Tracy K. Smith
Kind
Retreat
Writer
" Literature allows us to be open, to listen, and to be curious. "
Tracy K. Smith
Open
Us
Listen
" As I've been teaching longer and longer, I realize I learn so much from the voices I'm naturally drawn to, the writers I love on an instinctive level - but I also learn so much from the writers that I have to work to grasp. "
Tracy K. Smith
Much
Realize
Learn
" I go to a lot of writers conferences and literary festivals that tend to be in college towns or cities, and I'm eager to see what happens if those same texts and those same questions move outside of those areas to smaller rural communities where there are surely people who read and love poetry. "
Tracy K. Smith
Questions
Love
People
" I had to say to myself, 'I haven't written enough about blackness, yet it's part of my consciousness and my lived experience.' I had to get over that anxiety of 'I haven't done this before.' "
Tracy K. Smith
Myself
Say
Anxiety
" 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
Space
Thinking
Poetry
" 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
See
Feel
" For me, a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit. "
Tracy K. Smith
Kind
Opportunity
Myself
" I have three kids, so children's literature is a big part of my life. "
Tracy K. Smith
Big
Three
My Life
" Rather than numbing or drowning out the difficult-to-describe but urgently sensed feelings that are part of being human, poetry invites us to tease them out, to draw them into language that is rooted in intricate thought and strange impulse. "
Tracy K. Smith
Thought
Feelings
Language
" I think the way poems are taught to high school students is completely counterintuitive; it sets up this sense of being the poem's adversary. The poem is sort of sneakily trying to outsmart you. "
Tracy K. Smith
Think
Trying
School
" 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
" Listening to music and lyrics and watching movies, I think, uses a lot of the same muscles we use in reading and experiencing poetry - and yet we somehow forget that we have those when it comes to sitting down with a book of poems. "
Tracy K. Smith
Music
Poetry
Reading
" I feel like it's a gift for any writer to be recognized like this. "
Tracy K. Smith
Writer
I Feel Like
Gift
" History is a heavy thing everywhere. "
Tracy K. Smith
Heavy
History
Thing
" A poem, necessarily, sits at a register that's different from our usual conversational voices. You have to listen more actively to get to the heart of what's being said, what you as a reader or listener are being asked to feel or notice. "
Tracy K. Smith
Said
More
Listen
" 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
Him
Mystery
Universe
" 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
Death
Writing
Child
" 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
Life
Mother
Children
" Jacqueline Woodson's books are such a gift to parents and children for their poignant subtlety and lyricism and their willingness to let a reader dwell in the pangs of realization that we sometimes try to protect our children from. "
Tracy K. Smith
Parents
Gift
Sometimes
" 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
Courage
Think
Faith
" Poetry is not the language we live in. It's not the language of our day-to-day errand-running and obligation-fulfilling, not the language with which we are asked to justify ourselves to the outside world. It certainly isn't the language to which commercial value has been assigned. "
Tracy K. Smith
Value
Live
Poetry
" 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
Poetry
Me
Life
" I feel that, as a person of color, I've always been interested in the stories that are quiet and the stories that often get overlooked. "
Tracy K. Smith
Quiet
Feel
Always
" 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
Language
Know
Think
" 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
Thinking
Distance
Poetry
" 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
Together
Speak
Create