19+ Tracy K. Smith Quotes (Inspiring, Emotive And Impressive)

Tracy K. Smith is an American poet and educator. She is the author of four poetry collections, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Life on Mars, and the memoir Ordinary Light. Smith is the current U.S. Poet Laureate and the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University.

time never stops, but does it end? and how many livesbefore take-off, before we find ourselves beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold? — Tracy K. Smith

Keetje Kuipers' poems are daring, formally beautiful and driven by rich imagery and startling ideas. — Tracy K. Smith

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. — Tracy K. Smith

Poems infatuated with their own smarts and detached from any emotional grounding can leave the reader feeling lonely, empty and ashamed for having expected more. Like icy adolescents, such poetry is more interested in commiserating than acknowledging that feelings — the sentiments that make us susceptible to sentimentality — actually exist. — Tracy K. Smith

So much of my poetry begins with something that I can describe in visual terms, so thinking about distance, thinking about how life begins and what might be watching us. — Tracy K. Smith

For me, a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit. — Tracy K. Smith

I think tension between the intimate and the vast is at the heart of every poem by any poet, though of course the terms with which it is explored vary. Perhaps it is something we seek out in order to affirm that our small lives are tethered to something large and ongoing. — Tracy K. Smith

Everything that disappears/Disappears as if returning somewhere — Tracy K. Smith

Lizzie Harris's debut collection, Stop Wanting, crafts images and lines of such arresting splendor that I am very often driven to joy at the feats of beauty and healing that language is capable of bringing into being. — Tracy K. Smith

Often it is a moment rather than an event that makes a poem. — Tracy K. Smith

If I call it pain, and try to touch it With my hands, my own life, It lies still and the music thins, A pulse felt for through garments. — Tracy K. Smith

I feel like it's a gift for any writer to be recognized like this. — Tracy K. Smith

When I was young, my father was lord Of a small kingdom: a wife, a garden, Kids for whom his word was Word. It took years for my view to harden, To shrink him to human size. — Tracy K. Smith

I grew up in northern California in a town called Fairfield, which is kind of exactly between San Francisco and Sacramento, a small suburb. And I'm the youngest of five children. — Tracy K. Smith

We are here for what amounts to a few/hours,/a day at most./We feel around making sense of the terrain,/our own new limbs,/Bumping up against a herd of bodies/until one becomes home./Moments sweep past. The grass bends/then learns again to stand. — Tracy K. Smith

Once I started writing all the time and interacting with poets, I made a conscious decision to identify myself as a poet. It's funny how much a single word can provide focus and direction. As soon as I claimed that identity, I started clearing more and more space for poetry in my life and applying poetic tools to other areas of my life. The world became a different place, and I witnessed it through different kinds of eyes. — Tracy K. Smith

Brooklyn is kind of my writer's retreat. — Tracy K. Smith

I know that in a poem, even when the speaker is speaking from the poet's experience, there's always something that's borrowed, some authority that sits outside of the poet that the poem has claimed. There's a dramatic pitch that makes the speaker capable of saying something more courageous or stranger or simply other than what the poet would be able to say. — Tracy K. Smith

I've been beating my head all day long on the same six lines. — Tracy K. Smith

Life Lessons by Tracy K. Smith

1. Tracy K. Smith's work emphasizes the importance of understanding our own identities and how they are shaped by our experiences.
2. Her poetry explores themes of family, love, and loss, teaching us to appreciate the beauty in life's most difficult moments.
3. Smith's work encourages us to be mindful of the power of our words and actions and to use them to create a more just and equitable society.