Quotes from Tracy K. Smith

listen: the dark we've only ever imagined now audible, thrumming, marbled with static like gristly meat. a chorus of engines churns. silence taunts: a dare. everything that disappears disappears as if returning somewhere.

We want so much, When perhaps we live best In the spaces between loves, That unconscious roving, The heart its own rough animal. Unfettered.

Once upon a time, a woman told this to her daughter: Save yourself. The girl didn't think to ask for what? She looked into her mother's face and answered Yes. Years later, alone in the room where she lives The daughter listens to the life she's been saved from: Evening patter. Summer laughter. Young bodies Racing into the unmitigated happiness of danger.

When some people talk about money They speak as if it were a mysterious lover Who went out to buy milk and never Came back, and it makes me nostalgic For the years I lived on coffee and bread, Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday Like a woman journeying for water From a village without a well, then living One or two nights like everyone else On roast chicken and red wine.

time never stops, but does it end? and how many lives before take-off, before we find ourselves beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?

some like to imagine a cosmic mother watching through a spray of stars, mouthing 'yes, yes' as we toddle towards the light, biting her lip of we teeter at some ledge. longing to sweep us to her breast, she hopes for the best.

Look, I want to say, The worst thing you can imagine has already Zipped up its coat and is heading back Up the road to wherever it came from.

The Weather In Space Is God being pure force? The wind Or what commands it? When our lives slow And we can hold all that we love, it sprawls In our laps like a gangly doll. When the storm Kicks up and nothing is ours, we go chasing After all we're certain to lose, so alive --- Faces radiant with panic.

the body is what we lean toward, tensing as it darts, dancing away. but it's the voice that enters us. even saying nothing. even saying nothing over and over absently to itself

sometimes, what i see is a library in a rural community. all the tall shelves in the big open room. and the pencils in a cup at circulation, gnawed on by the entire population. the books have lived here all along, belonging for weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face, a pair of eyes. the most remarkable lies.

History is a ship forever setting sail.

It used to be, you'd open your mouth And the weather changed. You'd Open your mouth and the sky'd spill That dry, missing-someone kind of rain No matter the season. And it hurt Like a guitar hurts under the right hands. Like a good strong spell. Now You're all song. Body gone to memory. And guess what? It hurts Harder.

I shut my ears, averted my eyes, turning instead to what I thought at the time was pain's antidote: silence. I was wrong... Silence feeds pain, allows it to fester and thrive. What starves pain, what forces it to release its grip, is speech, the voice upon which rides the story, this is what happened; this is what I have refused to let claim me.

This is why I love poems: they invite me to sit down and listen to a voice speaking thoughtfully and passionately about what it feels like to be alive.

from time to time, i think of him watching me from over the top of his glasses, or eating candy from a jar. i remember thanking him each time the session was done. but mostly what i see is a human hand reaching down to lift a pebble from my tongue

Is it strange to say love is a language Few practice, but all, or near all speak?

the hours plink past like water from a window a/c. we sweat it out, teach ourselves to wait. silently, lazily, collapse happens.

Sometimes telling what happened, in whatever way you can, is a means of lightening your burden. It summons others to help you bear the weight of your own story, so that you might finally get out from under it.

One of poetry's great effects, through its emphasis upon feeling, association, music and image — things we recognize and respond to even before we understand why — is to guide us toward the part of ourselves so deeply buried that it borders upon the collective. "Staying Human: Poetry in the Age of Technology

Like a god, / I believe in nothing.

while the father storms through adjacent rooms ranting with the force of kingdom come, not caring anymore what might snap us in its jaw

We saw to the edge of all there is - So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.

There is not a day in my life during which I have not looked at my Black children and worried. There is not a day in my life when I have not made actual prayers on their behalf. Simple prayers for their safety. Simple prayers for their survival.

And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure That someone was there squinting through the dust, Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only To be wanted back badly enough?