Quotes from Tracy K. Smith

Is this love the trouble you promised?

There are ways of entering the dream / The way a painter enters a studio: / To spill.

we like to think of it as parallel to what we know only bigger. one man against the authorities. or one man against a city of zombies. one man who is not, in fact, a man, sent to understand the caravan of men now chasing him like red ants let loose down the pants of america. man on the run.

She's like an island Made of rock, with one lone tree at the top Of the only mountain. She's like the sole Incongruous goat tethered to the tree, Smiling almost as you approach, scraping The ground with its horns, and then-- Lickety split--lurching hard, daring The rope to snap.

Old loves turn up in dreams, still livid at every slight.

Just like the life In which I'm forever a child looking out my window at the night sky Thinking one day I'll touch the world with bare hands Even if it burns.

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

So why do we insist He has vanished, that death ran off with our Everything worth having? Why not that he was Swimming only through this life--his slow, Graceful crawl, shoulders rippling, Legs slicing away at the waves, gliding Further into what life itself denies? He is only gone so far as we can tell. Though When I try, I see the white cloud of his hair In the distance like an eternity.

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

These and other tools help poems call our attention to moments when the ordinary nature of experience changes--when the things we think we know flare into brighter colors, starker contrasts, strange and intoxicating possibilities.

How wonderful would it be if trust, or even love, might be possible between any of us — or even all of us. I mean, if we let ourselves believe such a thing is possible.

Marbled with static like gristly meat.

Is God being or 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.

Sometimes, small minds seem to take the day. Election fraud. A migratory plague. Less and less surprises us as odd.

We move in and out of rooms, leaving Our dust, our voices pooled on sills. We hurry from door to door in a downpour Of days. Old trees inch up, their trunks thick With new rings. All that we see grows Into the ground. And all we live blind to Leans its deathless heft to our ears and sings.

This is why I love poems: they require me to sit still, listen deeply, and imagine putting myself in someone else's unfamiliar shoes. The world I return to when the poem is over seems fuller and more comprehensible as a result.

History, with its hard spine & dog-eared Corners, will be replaced with nuance, Just like the dinosaurs gave way to mounds and mounds of ice.

A poem can lie.)

Not the flame, but what it promised, Surrender. To be quenched of danger.

Is this some enigmatic type of test? What if we Fail? How and to whom do we address our appeal?

There is a We in this poem To which everyone belongs. As in We the People-- In order to form a more perfect Union-- And: We were objects of much curiosity To the Indians-- And: The next we present before you Are things very appalling-- And: We find we are living, suffering, loving, Dying a story. We had not known otherwise-- We 's a huckster, trickster, has pluck. We will draw you in.

the life In which I'm forever a child looking out my window at the night sky Thinking one day I'll touch the world with bare hands Even if it burns.

Sometimes this poem tells itself nothing matters, All's a joke. Relax, it says, everything's Taken care of. (A poem can lie.)

What does living do to any of us?