“I shut my ears, averted my eyes, turning instead to what I thought at the time was pain's antidote: silence. I was wrong... Silence feeds pain, allows it to fester and thrive. What starves pain, what forces it to release… — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share Image
“listen: the dark we've only ever imagined now audible, thrumming, marbled with static like gristly meat. a chorus of engines churns. silence taunts: a dare. everything that disappears disappears as if returning somewhere.” — 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… — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share Image
“sometimes, what i see is a library in a rural community. all the tall shelves in the big open room. and the pencils in… — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share Image
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… — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share Image
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
