Let's Dive Into Tracy K. Smith's Poems "Declaration" and "Urban Youth"

In today's deep dive, we will be taking a look at two poems from Smith's 2018 collection Wade In The Water: "Declaration" and "Urban Youth."

Declaration

He has

 

              sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people

 

He has plundered our—

 

                                           ravaged our—

 

                                                                         destroyed the lives of our—

 

taking away our­—

                                  abolishing our most valuable—

and altering fundamentally the Forms of our—

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for

Redress in the most humble terms:

 

                                                                Our repeated

Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

 

We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration

and settlement here.

                                     —taken Captive

                                              

                                                                    on the high Seas

                                                                                                     to bear—

"Declaration" is an erasure poem, which is a form of found poetry wherein a poet takes an existing text and erases, blacks out, or obscures a large portion of the text, creating a wholly new work from what remains. Erasure poetry may be used as a means of collaboration, creating a new text from an old one and thereby starting a dialogue between the two, or as a means of confrontation, a challenge to a pre-existing text. Smith so beautifully encapsulates this erasure style of poetry in “Declaration,” as she takes the original document of the Declaration of Independence and removes specific words and phrases to give the document a whole new voice and meaning.

"Declaration" is one of my favorite poems from Wade in the Water. I just love how she uses the erasure style of poetry in this piece as a means of confronting and challenging pre-existing notions and social and racial constructs in our country. Ultimately, she does this in order to shed light on and give a voice to those who have unfortunately been left out of America’s history for so long. More specifically, through this poem, Smith is calling out the horrible institution of slavery and the fact that African Americans were left out of the freedom so many Americans claimed from the Declaration of Independence. I find this really admirable of Smith, because we see in the poem “Declaration,” along with her other erasure poems in Wade in the Water, that she is writing this poem in the erasure style not only as a means of artistic and literary expression, but also a means of promoting social change, righting the wrongs of America’s dark and oppressive past. This is something that I really commend her for and that I think is so admirable because, above all else, in “Declaration,” Smith is using her voice as an acclaimed, well-known poet to give voices to others, which is so beautiful to me. 

I also admire how Smith organizes this poem in terms of the format and, more specifically, in terms of the breaks, which are demonstrated by the dashes throughout the piece. In the poem, the dashes serve to not only indicate and remind readers that this is, in fact, an erasure poem and that parts of the original document have been removed, but the dashes also – in a more beautiful and profound sense – suggest that the crimes of slavery are, in a way, unspeakable. The reader is compelled to fill in the blanks at each place where a hyphen occurs, cutting off the sentence and leaving the content up for each individual reader's reader's own interpretation. I really value how Smith is able to incorporate the reader in this sort of dialogue, which definitely speaks to the overall inclusive spirit of this poem that is marked by the erasure style. This inclusivity, especially of those whose voices the original Declaration of Independence abandoned, is something so valuable and central to this poem, and I really praise Smith for being able to invoke and carry out this spirit of recognition, acknowledgment, and inclusiveness in such a purposeful, profound way in “Declaration.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Urban Youth

You'd wake me for Saturday cartoons

When you were twelve and I was two.

Hong Kong Phooey, Fat Albert & Cosby Kids.

In the '70s, everything shone bright as brass.

When you were twelve and I was two,

It was always autumn. Blue sky, flimsy clouds.

This was the '70s. Every bright day a brass

Trombone slept, leaning in your room.

Autumn-crisp air. Blue skies. Clouds

Of steam clotted the window near the stove (and

Slept in the trombone kept in your room). You

Wrote a poem about the sea and never forgot it.

Steam clotted the window near the stove

Where Mom stood sometimes staring out.

I forget now what there was to see.

So much now gone was only then beginning.

Mom stood once looking while you and 

Dad and Mike taught me to ride a two-wheeler.

So much was only then beginning. Should 

I have been afraid? The hedges hummed with bees,

But it was you and Dad and Mike teaching me to ride,

Running along beside until you didn’t have to hold on.

Who was afraid? The hedges thrummed with bees

That only sand. Every happy thing I’ve ever known,

You held, or ran alongside not having to hold.

I really appreciate how in this poem, through form and imagery, Smith is able to effectively and gracefully relay her purpose to her readers, which is to cast youth and childhood as having some kind of ethereal eternity, some transcendent timeline contained within it. This poem feels simple and playful to me at times, but even so, Smith is able to beautifully craft a profound message surrounding the realities of childhood, youth, and the passage of time through distinct images, as well as through the sheer structure of the poem.

This is a pantoum poem, which consists of quatrains (4-lined stanzas) in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. These repeated lines, as we see in this poem, aren’t necessarily exactly the same; rather, they change meaning and are recontextualized in order to best convey what Smith is trying to say, and I really commend Smith for being able to successfully and gracefully execute this. In this poem, through the simple and short anecdote about her learning to ride a bike as a child in the last three stanzas, combined with other little stories throughout the other parts of the poem, Smith seems to be characterizing her own childhood as containing its own kind of eternity, invoking an everlasting spirit that is augmented by idealistic nature imagery, such as the hedges thrumming with bees, the blue sky, and the flimsy clouds. These images imbue the eternal youth Smith is discussing with more idyllic connotations, which I find really beautiful in this poem. And this is further characterized by the pantoum form of the poem, whose repeated lines portray a sort of cyclical adolescence – one that never quite leaves its routine repetition, which is really, in my opinion, what Smith is looking to get her readers to understand and recognize. Overall, I really admire Smith for being able to successfully complement the pantoum structure of the poem with beautiful, nostalgic, yet deeply complex and profound imagery as a means by which to best convey her message across to her audience.