Video Series: Tracy K. Smith's Professional Life and Career

 Use this link to watch a video detailing Tracy K. Smith's professional life and career!

Tracy K. Smith's Professional Life and Career

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Tracer Workshop: Smith and Pop Culture

Welcome to the second Tracer Workshop! In these workshops, you will learn about specific techniques, stylistic choices, poetic decisions, etc. that Tracy K. Smith frequently uses and makes throughout her several books of poetry. I have “traced” such aspects of Smith's work across all of the collections that I have read thus far and will be sharing my findings, observations, and commentary with you via these workshops.  This second workshop deals with the ways in which Smith uses pop culture references across several of her poems. This is most prominently demonstrated in her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Life on Mars . In my opinion, Smith's purpose in employing these sort of simple, well-known references in otherwise complicated pieces of poetry filled with ambiguity, complicated metaphors, distinct images, and difficult subject matters is to reach each of her readers. Given that her poems are so complexly layered and often merit a second, third, or even a fourth read to tr...
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Let's Dive Into Tracy K. Smith's Poems "Declaration" and "Urban Youth"

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A Look Into "Unrest in Baton Rouge"

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  Tracy K. Smith’s poem "Unrest in Baton Rouge" from her collection Wade in the Water  was written in response to the photograph above by the same name. Here, Ieshia Evans offers her hands for arrest as she protests outside the Baton Rouge, La., police department after the death of Alton Sterling in July 2016. Sterling, 37, had been shot multiple times at close range by a police officer. The shooting was captured on video and widely shared on the internet. (Source: Princeton University) Learn more about this photograph and other pieces by Bachman  here . Unrest in Baton Rouge after the photo by Jonathan Bachman Our bodies run with ink dark blood. Blood pools in the pavement’s seams. Is it strange to say love is a language Few practice, but all, or near all speak? Even the men in black armor, the ones Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else Are they so buffered against, if not love’s blade Sizing up the heart’s familiar meat? We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat. Love: ...
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