By THIRSTY
Tracy K. Smith is the 52nd
Poet Laureate of the United States. Her
collection of poetry entitled Life on
Mars won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize. She is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor of the Humanities and Director
and Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University and the author of four collections of poetry and one memoir.
Stay
Thirsty Magazine was honored to visit with Tracy K. Smith at her home
for this Conversation about her latest collection of poetry, Wade In The Water, her life, her history
and the importance of poetry to her.
STAY THIRSTY: In your latest book, Wade In The Water, you see contemporary life often linked to
difficult periods in American history. What historical moments weigh heaviest
on you?
TRACY K. SMITH: I really see American history as a single continuum,
but I was compelled to think about antebellum history in Wade in the Water, and the original hypocrisy—the myth of racial
inequality—riddling American democracy. I see the Civil War as a failed attempt
at resolution. And the Civil Rights movement as a genuine step forward. But
what the present reveals, day upon day, is that racism and white supremacy
remain deeply and systematically ingrained in our culture. I think we’re
reckoning with that reality now.
STAY THIRSTY: You grew up in California, but your mother came from
Alabama. You were educated on the East Coast and currently live there. Where do
you feel most comfortable? Where do you feel you fit in? Have those feelings
seeped into your poems in Wade In The
Water and why did you dedicate your book to Tina?
TRACY K. SMITH: Home is many things for me. It’s family, mostly. But I
also have come to feel a deep sense of connection to the energy and the
landscape of the East Coast. For many years I thought I couldn’t live outside
of the cities here. I like the extremes of weather. I like the visible history.
I feel comfortable in all of the places I’ve lived, but the home I’ve chosen
for the foreseeable future is among the trees and the foxes and deer and birds
particular to Princeton, NJ.
Tina Chang is one of my oldest and
dearest friends. We became poets together, and we remain committed to
supporting each other on our journey as writers. I wanted this book to stand as
an emblem of that.
STAY THIRSTY: How do your personal emotions about subjects as
diverse as slavery, corporate pollution and violence inform your poems? How do
you know when a poem has reached its proper balance and is finished when
dealing with such complex and intense subjects?
TRACY K. SMITH: I’ve always written poems about the things that
trouble or confound me, perhaps more so than about the things I wish to
celebrate. America is one of those complicated regions in my mind. It defines
who I am, but I remain conflicted about what that means. I use my poems to trace
out some of those questions, to grapple with some of those fears and wishes
regarding who we are as a culture. I feel that a poem of this nature is
finished when it’s allowed me to see something from a different perspective,
when it’s fostered some sense of revelation, even or especially if that
revelation is troubling in some way.
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| Tracy K. Smith |
STAY THIRSTY: How have your experiences as a woman, an
African-American and a mother in a world often ruled by men and wealth
motivated your perceptions about art and contemporary culture?
TRACY K. SMITH: That’s a tough question to really answer concretely. I
know that who I am—a woman, African American, American, born in the late 20th
Century and reckoning with life in the early 21st, etc.—has guided
me toward the voices, stories, places, possibilities that interest and
preoccupy me. I am most interested in the marginal or overshadowed
perspectives, the stories that sit outside of or beneath the central American
narrative, or the accepted myths of American identity.
STAY THIRSTY: How do the many voices in your poems become known to
you? Do they have a life of their own or are you in control of them?
TRACY K. SMITH: I encountered the voices that run through Wade in the Water through books, primary
and secondary sources on blacks’ experience during the days of slavery and the
Civil War. Those poems and others like them require research, and then I hope
that I learn to listen in the particular way that might allow me to draw out
what is most compelling, unsettling, lyrical and essential in these various
statements and accounts. I think that I’m in control of the craft-based choices
driving every poem, but I’m also hoping to be susceptible to something outside
of my own conscious sensibility. I’m hoping to be moved and guided by something
that is not grounded primarily in effort.
STAY THIRSTY: Why were you drawn to spend your life in poetry rather
than in prose?
TRACY K. SMITH: Poetry feels sacred to me, even when it is playful,
secular, gritty. Poetry feels like the syntax of the unconscious mind,
or—better still—the soul. I love prose, I write in other forms, but I believe
that poetry unites me with my largest, perhaps my eternal self.
STAY THIRSTY: In today’s short-attention span world, poetry seems to
be gaining new favor. Do you think the millennial generation is connecting with
poetry because it is more approachable than the novel?
TRACY K. SMITH: I don’t know. And I doubt that is the case. Novels are
accessible because we live in prose. Poetry is accessible because a poem nudges
us toward the part of ourselves that falls more easily into disuse. I hope
millennials connect with poetry because they yearn to break out of the
market-driven, product-obsessed mode that advertisers and corporations have
succeeded in making more or less inescapable.
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| Griffin Lotson, Tracy K. Smith and the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters |
STAY THIRSTY: Your title poem, Wade
In The Water for the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters, speaks of a time in
African-American history that is presented in the song and dance of the Ring
Shouter women. As you reflect on your personal history, far distant from the
slavery days of the Deep South, why were you so moved by their performance and
what still haunts you about your distant roots?
TRACY K. SMITH: This question brings me back to the sense of the
continuum. When you are young, all history feels like ancient history. But as I
age, I realize how near I am to the many generations I descend from. The Middle
Passage, slavery, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement don’t feel
remote. I’m proud to descend from such strong, resilient, generous, imaginative
and faithful people. I describe them as the “marvelous many gone” in the poem
you refer to. And it really was the ceremony of the ring shout that drew up a
palpable sense of all those lives, and all they gave themselves to, and all they
brought into being. It’s a joyful tradition that commemorates a richly
complicated history—one I think America ought to better celebrate and submit to
learn from.
(Photo of Tracy K. Smith credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths)
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