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 Copy Share Image
For years following the death of my mother, I wanted to write about her. I started writing what I thought of as personal essays… — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share Image
“So much we once coveted. So much That would have saved us, but lived, Instead, its own quick span, returning To uselessness with the mute acquiescence Of shed skin. It watches us watch it: Our faulty eyes, our telltale heat, hearts Ticking through our shirts. We’re here To titter at gimcracks, the naïve tools, The replicas of replicas stacked like… — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share
“sometimes, what i see is a library in a rural community. all the tall shelves in the big open room. and the pencils in a cup at circulation, gnawed on by the entire population. the books have lived here all along, belonging for weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence of family names, speaking (at… — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share
I have three kids, so children's literature is a big part of my life. — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share Image
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… — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share
One of poetry's great effects, through its emphasis upon feeling, association, music, and image - things we recognize and respond to even before we… — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share Image
“we like to think of it as parallel to what we know only bigger. one man against the authorities. or one man against a… — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share Image
A question is a pursuit, an invitation to envision and explore a series of possibilities, to struggle and empathize and doubt and believe. The… — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share Image
I know my curiosity as a writer and as a person makes me really interested in moving to parts of the country that I… — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share Image
For me, a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit. — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share Image
