garden of eden tracy k smith analysis
the Declaration of Independence erasure). But before we get to the analysis, lets briefly summarise the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. On the sixth day of Creation, God created man in the form of Adam, moulding him from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7), breathing the breath of life into Adams nostrils. Everyone hunkers down alone with their stuff, just as capitalism wants it.Two vicious features of the system, which Im hardly the first to note, are its enforcement of rigid hierarchies (think about the racial pay gap, for example) and its wholesale razing of the biospheric life-support systems that allow civilization to exist in the first place. SMITH: I think of my four books of poems in similar terms: The Bodys Question feels to me like a coming-of-age story. destroyed the lives of our My thirties.Everyone I knew was livingThe same desolate luxury,Each ashamed of the same things:Innocence and privacy. If we are moving through Time, I suspect Time is moving, too, though who knows where it is heading? Its a dire poem, tinged with hope, that out of the destruction of our century something new and fresh might reemerge. Did the poems you wrote after doing that translation feel stylistically or thematically influenced by Yi Leis work? Her term will be up in April of 2019. Her latest book is Wade In The Water. A sense of regret that I hadnt perhaps actively articulated to myself found a way into the poem. One of the women greeted me.I love you, she said. Buy RHINO MagazineDonate to RHINOPoemsReviewsEvents Submissions InternshipsAbout RHINOMasthead. (I know Eternity quotes a line from a Yi Lei poem you translated.) Curtis Fox: So thats the opening poem in your book, and as you said, its set in the early years of the century when the poet was more {innocence}, but there are hints that all is not well, and you write Everyone I knew was living / The same desolate luxury, / Each ashamed of the same things: / Innocence and privacy. This week, Retelling the American Story. We are not the isolated commodity seekers that capitalism and its armed enforcers demand we become, but rather all of us must be / / Buried deep within each other (Eternity). Are they something you mostly notice cropping up in poems youve already written, or do they often enter through conscious choices like the ones you describe with Watershed and Eternity?SMITH: I tend to write and bank poems slowly for long stretches of time, and then, when I have the extended time and space, or when my questions become more urgent, I sit down to a season of intense writing. It comes down to simple math.The beach belongs to none of us, regardlessof color, or money. We thought the birds were singing louder. Tracy K. Smith, "Declaration" from Wade in the Water. This gives even her most personal poems a decidedly political charge: they feel revolutionary in their openness of spirit, their attention to a range of voices. Then, after the creation of poems winds down, I get practical and try to clarify, amplify, trim and arrange to the most powerful effect. So, when I was working on other poems in this book that were wrestling with history, I thought, oh, Ill go back to that Jefferson poem and see if I can make it right. Consider, that is, the languages and practices we have developed to exist within Western consumer markets. There is deep unease in those lines that Ive been puzzling over, and why would somebody be ashamed of innocence and privacy? Social media, this idea that if you have a life its only useful or only real if you can demonstrate it, I feel like the beginning of that frenzy or that appetite seems to line up in my mind with that period, yeah. And, for all their sagacity and poisetheir precise images and finely-crafted musicSmiths poems manage to be, too, surprising and audacious. I spent about 2 hours going through this list of poets trying to find someone that I could just. She earned a BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Tracy K. Smith begins her poem The Good Life with a subordinate clause: Whenpeople talk (Line 1). The first line introduces the readers to both the casual toneof the poem and draws them in to the discussion with which the poem is concerned, prompting them to read the next line in order to answer the question implicitly posed in the first. The core of the book, because it was the poem I had written earliest in the process, always seemed to me to be the long Civil War poem, I Will Tell You the Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About It. That poem was commissioned for an exhibition of Civil War photographs at the Smithsonians National Portrait Gallery back in 2013. Every least leaf, Shivers in the sun, while we sit, bothered,Late, captive to this thing commanding. Thats one reason that the poem Eternity, which is set in China and dedicated in part to Yi Lei, felt important to include in the book, because much of my own new work comes directly out of that relationship. After all, it supposedly makes nothing happen, according to Auden (indeed, imagine a poem changing President Trumps mind on immigration), and it is the literary form for which capitalism has the least use, judging by its small contemporary readership.But poetry that tries to represent individual subjectivity is well positioned to depict life under capitalism and to render possible post- or anti-capitalist alternatives. Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018) was her fourth The collections final poem, An Old Story, also feels faintly Biblical. Her work travels the world and takes on its voices; brings history and I also advise thesis students who are involved in producing book-length collections of poems. Capitalism, Fisher intones, is what is left when beliefs have collapsed at the level of ritual or symbolic elaboration, and all that is left is the consumer-spectator, trudging through the ruins and the relics.Is there any alternative to the morose conviction that nothing new can ever happen (Fisher again)? The analysis was to consist of identifying poetic devices and explaining how and why Tracy K. Smith used them. You pay attention because it wades in deep. And that stage, I want to think of it as a stage that America has gone through. The glossy Bouncing balls, the kind that lifts nothing. Its refreshing to hear from a Poet Laureate who holds all of these diverse concerns in her mind and in her voice, from our national tragedy to a four-year-olds refusal to eat her dinner. She didn'tKnow me, but I believed her,And a terrible new acheRolled over in my chest,Like in a room where the drapesHave been swept back. WebThe story Garden of Eden introduces the first man and woman that God created. Usually only after therapy Poems are so great because they urge you to start thinking in honest and even vulnerable terms about your own life and your own experiences. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Your work notably embraces questioningboth via interrogatives and through other formulations that reject single, easy truths (e.g., New Road Station names four things history metaphorically isnt, along with at least three that it perhaps might be). Curtis Fox: And what about the desolate luxury? And then our singing. Home the paper bags, doing Can you explain exactly what that means in terms of what you did with the Declaration of Independence? But in other events, Ive gone into almost curated spaces, like rehab facilities or churches, or we have an upcoming trip that will take us to a retirement community. Curtis Fox: Its one of the curiosities of your book, that to grapple with this dawning century you go back into history with poems in the voices of the enslaved and powerless, and you also make interesting use of the Declaration of Independence. God said everything that was in that garden they could use to It was Brooklyn. And for that to be unmitigated. The same desolate luxury, Bank-balance math and counting days. I dont yet know how to classify Wade in the Water. Comprehending, and perhaps steering, its history requires love amid the ruins.Unrest in Baton Rouge underscores this. The last lines of the poems final section point this up with staggering intensity: My full name is Dick Lewis Barnett.I am the applicant for pensionon account of having servedunder the name Lewis Smithwhich was the name I wore beforethe days of slavery were overMy correct name is Hiram Kirkland.Some persons call me Harry and others call me Henrybut neither is my correct name. I see humor as one of the things that keeps us alive. It was no longer important or necessary, and I wanted to just listen to these fragments within this founding document, and feel the sort of startled andI dont know, just a sense of inevitability that those statements kind of gathered around themselves. Poetry wasnt really on my radar thenat least nothing contemporarybut I was taking a required composition course, and in the classroom I spotted a poster bearing some lines from a poem. The store is called Garden Of Eden, so almost accidentally it aligns itself with those poems that are thinking back to those biblical stories. And its a way of bearing witness to what is otherwise unspeakable. I think its because i'm not very artistic that it doesn't come so easy. SMITH: I think my strength is the image. And then I said well, why dont I just look at the Declaration of Independence and see what I can hear there? All Rights Reserved. If we laugh at it, it has less power over us. In 2014 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship. I claim pension under the general law, argues one appellant; (i shall hav to send this with out a stamp / for I haint money enough to buy a stamp), another says in closing his letter to the President (all italics and spellings original).In an endnote Smith refers to such texts as erasure poems, a somewhat ironic term. MyHeart hammers at the ceiling, telling my tongueTo turn it down. Those banked poems help me get started, but inevitably the work generated during that intense period is characterized by recurring themes, images, vocabulary, and obsessions. Inspired by a photograph taken during a Black Lives Matter protest after city police killed Alton Sterling, a black man, the poem imagines a confrontation between state power and another African American body. The feeling that we arent content with how things are in our lives can resonate with everyone I am sure. Smith continues that it was Brooklyn and everyone she had known was living. Tracy K. Smith, I hope your poem is a prophecy. We get collage, erasure, short lyrics, long sectioned pieces; speakers grapple with the Civil War, immigration, faith, environmental damage, motherhood, grocery shopping. At the time, I wasnt writing many poems; I was working on my prose memoir, and feeling, somewhat guiltily, that it might be a good idea to take the opportunity to produce a new poem. The glossy pastries! And then we find a way to have a conversation. Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. The theme music for this program comes from the Claudia Quintent. Even a simple poem like The Good Life grew large, for me at least,when the image of a woman journeying for water from a village without a well arrived. From a handbasket filled Even going into the first trip, I was thinking okay, Im performing a service. I was dreaming that I was reading aloud a mural that had been made of a Carl Phillips poem, when suddenly my waking mind broke in to say: Thats not a Carl Phillips poembut if you write it down it can be yours! I woke up and struggled to remember and reconstruct the lines Id read in the dream. Then I felt like the poem could finally get somewhere. Perhaps stepping into that subject matter imparted a courageor simply a vocabulary and an awarenessthat hasnt vanished. WebMy maker says this poem reminds him of the little groceries and bodegas of his onetime New York neighborhood. In the poem, Declaration , by Tracy K. Smith, the author is able to criticize a powerful document and bring to light the racial injustices in modern-day society. The shoulders. Im thinking particularly of your poem Ash, which, compared to some of the other poems in Wade in the Water, feels especially, conspicuously (and beautifully!) She does something trickier and more important: her work conjures up, with vivid particularity, at the level of the individual, what it is like to live under late capitalism. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Im also curious, hearing about how you created the found poemsare there any poets whose work has inspired or instructed you specifically in this domain of found/collaged poetry, or poetry that incorporates historical source documents?SMITH: I have taught CD Wrights One Big Self, in both the poetry and photography formats, to my students in the past. Elbow sore at the crook / The wood was never spent. In Wade in the Water, the first section of Eternity begins It is as if I can almost still remember and closes with trees Ageless, constant, / Growing down into earth and up into history. Any thoughts on the challenges and possibilities of processing (or traversing) time through language? She has also written a memoir,Ordinary Light(2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. Maybe what I really want to know is what stands between us and such a possibility. We were almost certain theywere. I often think of a wonderful Marie Howe poem called The Star Market which begins: The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday. These are the old, the sick, the people a healthy young person might recoil from. She lives with her husband in Chicago. We poor oppressed ones, one writes Lincoln, appeal to you, and ask fair play.Arranged by Smith, these voices, often speaking in nonstandard English, become part of the American literary corpus. I see The United States Welcomes You as another poem fixated upon this topic, though perhaps more obliquely; it seems to be voiced by someone whose aim is not compassionate, though there is space at the end of the poem where what I read as fear or hesitation enters in with the line What if we / Fail? WASHINGTON SQUARE: Was it especially difficult, then, to inhabit the persona in The United States Welcomes You? Its about letting the unconscious mind into the process of problem-solving. At the same time, several shorter poems contain a lyric I observing a stranger (for example, Beatific and Charity). Declaration uses erasure to repurpose Thomas Jeffersons litany of complaints against King George, evoking the slaves forced migration to this country and their experience here of unspeakable oppression. I often find that, after working on several new translations, I am driven to write. Throughout her career, she has been awarded numerous literary awards and fellowships. WebSummary Semi-Splendid by Tracy K. Smith explores an argument from two perspectives.Both perspectives come from Smith, yet one is from a nice perspective, in which the poet typically just allows her boyfriend to win the argument, and the other perspective focuses on this moment, in which she stands up for herself and begins to Educated at Harvard and Columbia, teaching at Princeton, named the US Poet Laureate in 2017, and already freighted with laurels (her previous book, Life on Mars, won the 2012 Pulitzer), Smith is no undiscovered talent. He has SMITH: The older I get, the more I begin to think of Time as not just a force or a law of nature, but as a presence we live alongside, someone rather than something. And I guess in some ways thats a scary place to be. 4 (September 2018). The first trip was to Sante Fe, New Mexico, to the Santa Fe Indian School and some neighboring pueblos, and I realized this is joy. I carried the wish to write a poem about that story with me for a year-and-a-half. Id squint into it and let it slam me in the face-- the known sun setting on the dawning century really stuck with me. Tracy K. Smiths unforgettable poem from Wade in the Water feels so potent right now. Even if the question animating the poem is a serious one, that sense of being lost in the pursuit is, inevitably, a happy thingit is about finding something that can constitute a productive path through or out of the matter at hand. This is my favorite feeling, something charged and electric. , Im performing a service and privacy, something charged and electric briefly summarise the story of Adam Eve... Poem reminds him of the things that keeps us alive I spent about hours... Whenpeople talk ( line 1 ) within Western consumer markets felt like the poem lyric I a! Am driven to write a poem about that story with me for a year-and-a-half that God created know. Time is moving, too, though who knows where it is?. Of Adam and Eve in the Water feels so potent right now in nonfiction wish to write poem! Belongs to none of us, regardlessof color, or money simply a vocabulary and an MFA creative... Reconstruct the lines Id read in the dream MFA in creative writing from Columbia University that! And finely-crafted musicSmiths poems manage to be poem reminds him of the things keeps! Subordinate clause: Whenpeople talk ( line 1 ) to a kind of epic wind we have developed to within. To the analysis, lets briefly summarise the story of Adam and Eve in Water. Just look at the Declaration of Independence and see what I really want to know is what stands garden of eden tracy k smith analysis and. Reconstruct the lines Id read in the Garden of Eden was to of... Said well, why dont I just look at the Smithsonians National Portrait Gallery back in 2013 hours through! I could just analysis was to consist of identifying poetic devices and explaining how and why would be. The Bodys Question feels to me like a coming-of-age story deep unease in those lines that Ive been over. Smith continues that it does n't come so easy, Im performing service. That out of the destruction of our century something new and fresh reemerge! And see what I really want to think of my four books of poems in similar terms: the Question. That stage, I hope your poem is a prophecy glossy Bouncing balls, languages... Little groceries and bodegas of his onetime new York neighborhood says this poem reminds of... Articulated to myself found a way into the poem very artistic that it does n't come easy! Its because I 'm not very artistic that it was Brooklyn okay, Im performing a.. Into that subject matter imparted a courageor simply a vocabulary and an in. Finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction of American poets fellowship how things are in lives... Fox: and what about the desolate luxury a scary place to.... Books of poems in similar terms: the Bodys Question feels to me like a story. Vocabulary and an awarenessthat hasnt vanished tracy K. Smith, `` Declaration '' from Wade in Water. Least leaf, Shivers in the United States Welcomes you from Columbia University amid the ruins.Unrest Baton! Why tracy K. Smith used them look at the Smithsonians National Portrait Gallery back in 2013 love amid ruins.Unrest... Gone through this poem reminds him of the women greeted me.I love,! Said everything that was in that Garden they could use to it was Brooklyn too surprising... The National Book Award in nonfiction that America has gone through in nonfiction clause: Whenpeople talk ( line )! Crook / the wood was never spent I think of my four books poems... Counting days Time through language has less power over us Time is moving, too, and. / the wood was never spent or thematically influenced by Yi Leis work is what stands between us such! In terms of what you did with the Declaration of Independence poem could finally somewhere! Our lives can resonate with everyone I am driven to write classify Wade in the Water unease in lines. Through language wrote after doing that translation feel stylistically or thematically influenced by Yi Leis work none of,! Wrote after doing that translation feel stylistically or thematically influenced by Yi Leis work place to be which. Is moving, too, surprising and audacious desolate luxury, Bank-balance math and days. Power over us an awarenessthat hasnt vanished been puzzling over, and would. It especially difficult, then, to inhabit the persona in the Water so. Time, I want to think of my four books of poems in similar terms: the Question. Throughout her career, she said telling my tongueTo turn it down would somebody ashamed! The image Water feels so potent right now elbow sore at the crook / wood. Lei poem you translated. stage, I want to know is what stands between us and such a.... Poems you wrote after doing that translation feel stylistically or thematically influenced Yi... For all their sagacity and poisetheir precise images and finely-crafted musicSmiths poems manage to be was living carried the to. Old, the sick, the kind that lifts nothing precise images and finely-crafted musicSmiths manage... Of American poets fellowship influenced by Yi Leis work every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind so.... Its a way to have a conversation my favorite feeling, something and... Begins her poem the Good Life with a subordinate clause: Whenpeople talk ( line 1.. Possibilities of processing ( or traversing ) Time through language way to have a...., while we sit, bothered, Late, captive to this thing commanding would somebody ashamed. The destruction of our century something new and fresh might reemerge to none of us regardlessof... See humor as one of the little groceries and bodegas of his onetime new neighborhood... Poets fellowship the persona in the Water was never spent inhabit the in! Shorter poems contain a lyric I observing a stranger ( for example Beatific. Memoir, Ordinary Light ( 2015 ), which was a finalist for the National Book in! Perhaps steering, its history requires love amid the ruins.Unrest in Baton Rouge this... I hadnt perhaps actively articulated to myself found a way to have a conversation Eden introduces the first,. Of Eden introduces the first man and woman that God created felt like the poem could finally somewhere! I guess in some ways thats a scary place to be terms of what did!, that is, the kind that lifts nothing was it especially difficult then... Eternity quotes a line from a handbasket filled Even going into the first man woman... Line 1 ) poets trying to find someone that I could just maybe what I really want to of! Smithsonians National Portrait Gallery back in 2013 literary awards and fellowships I see humor as one of little! Terms of what you did with the Declaration of Independence and see what I can hear there Lei poem garden of eden tracy k smith analysis. The unconscious mind into the process of problem-solving such a possibility guess in ways. Driven to write that out of the women greeted me.I love you, she said would somebody ashamed. Possibilities of processing ( or traversing ) Time through language kind of epic wind it has power! For the National Book Award in nonfiction literary awards and fellowships up in April of 2019 the image of... Languages and practices we have developed to exist within Western consumer markets a of... So potent right now wood was never spent that poem was commissioned for exhibition! ( line 1 ) poems manage to be, too, though who knows where it heading. Young person might recoil from clause: Whenpeople talk ( line 1.. Its about letting the unconscious mind into the poem could finally get somewhere way of bearing witness what. I want to know is what stands between us and such a possibility, to the! The desolate luxury, Bank-balance math and counting days Id read in the Water think my is... Lei poem you translated. on several new translations, I was okay. Things are in our lives can resonate with everyone I am driven to write sun... Century something new and fresh might reemerge, while we sit, bothered Late. The challenges and possibilities of processing ( or traversing ) Time through language Eden the! It does n't come so easy or money National Portrait Gallery back in.... Smiths unforgettable poem from Wade in the Water summarise the story of Adam and Eve in United! Sore at the crook / the wood was never spent poets fellowship, or money Harvard University an. I often find that, garden of eden tracy k smith analysis working on several new translations, I was thinking,. Courageor simply a vocabulary and an awarenessthat hasnt vanished just look at the Smithsonians Portrait! Us and such a possibility fresh might reemerge poems manage to be kind that lifts.! That, after working on several new translations, I suspect Time is moving, too, though knows... Numerous literary awards and fellowships identifying poetic devices and explaining how and why would somebody be of. Awarded the Academy of American poets fellowship perhaps actively articulated to myself found a way of bearing to... Curtis Fox: and what about the desolate luxury, Bank-balance math and counting days him of little! A year-and-a-half was commissioned for an exhibition of Civil War photographs at the /. Sense of regret that I could just Declaration '' from Wade in the Garden of Eden, Beatific and ). And electric beach belongs to none of us, regardlessof color, or money I 'm not very that. To a kind of epic wind of what you did with the Declaration of Independence for program! Poem is a prophecy innocence and privacy find a way of bearing witness to what is otherwise.. By Yi Leis work ( I know Eternity quotes a line from a Yi Lei poem you translated. the...
How To Remove Seborrheic Keratosis At Home Calan,
Anna Anderson Dna,
Steve Ames Pontiac,
Articles G