I want to just go to places where writers don't usually go, where people like me don't usually show up, and say, 'Here are some poems. Do they speak to you? What do you hear in them?' — Tracy K. Smith Copy Share Image
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 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
