25 Tracy K. Smith Quotes for You to Enjoy

Tracy K. Smith

American Poet

Born: Apr 16, 1972

Feeling Life Me People Think You

Related authors: Edgar Allan Poe Emily Dickinson Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Maya Angelou Ralph Waldo Emerson Robert Frost T. S. Eliot Walt Whitman

Literature allows us to be open, to listen, and to be curious. Tracy K. Smith

Open Curious Listen Literature Us

A poem gives me a chance to have an encounter with a feeling, with an experience, with a wish, with an idea. Tracy K. Smith

Me Experience Feeling Wish Poem Gives Idea Encounter Chance

My hope is to create spaces where people of all stripes can come together and speak at a lower decibel level. We make more sense that way. We sound more like our real selves that way. Tracy K. Smith

I go to a lot of writers conferences and literary festivals that tend to be in college towns or cities, and I'm eager to see what happens if those same texts and those same questions move outside of those areas to smaller rural communities where there are surely people who read and love poetry. Tracy K. Smith

Love People College Those Cities Rural See Poetry Area Tend Writers Outside Smaller Towns Read Surely Go Lot Questions Texts Festivals Conferences Same Move Where Literary Happens Communities Who Eager

What excites me is that I'm an ambassador for poetry, which is something that I wholeheartedly believe in and that has been an anchor and a force of stability and consolation throughout my life. I think that's good news. Tracy K. Smith

Lately, I've been thinking about the difference between poetry and prose, and as I've experienced it, poetry is insistent. It allows for images and statements to operate in a single space and resonate powerfully without the application to be elaborated upon and narrated. Tracy K. Smith

Space Resonate Single Thinking Lately Statements About Insistent Poetry Prose Between Operate Without Been Difference Experienced Application Images

We all need poetry. The moments in our lives that are characterized by language that has to do with necessity or the market, or just, you know, things that take us away from the big questions that we have, those are the things that I think urge us to think about what a poem can offer. Tracy K. Smith

You Language Big Think Market Our Our Lives Those Characterized About Poem Poetry Take Know Questions Offer Big Questions Just Urge Us Moments Away Lives Things Necessity Need

I think humans have always felt watched back by whatever is out there flickering in the distance. What excites me is what the imagination creates, not simply in explanation of what is there but also to explain or justify the feeling of awe and attachment that the heavens inspire. Tracy K. Smith

Me Inspire Feeling Whatever Think Imagination Back Distance Out Attachment Simply Excites Also Felt Always Heavens Explain Justify Explanation Creates Flickering Awe Watched Humans

I don't know how anyone can see the Hubble 'Deep Field' image and not feel like something else is going about its business out there. Tracy K. Smith

Business Field Else Out See About Something Something Else Feel Like Know How Hubble Going Anyone Deep Image

Prose is something that is persistent in staying in one place long enough to not only zero in on the dramatic effect of something that might have happened, or something that might have been seen, but also in watching how it played out and thinking about the cause and the effect. Tracy K. Smith

I have kept journals at different times in my life. And a lot of my early notebooks became places where I would just think on the page, trying to parse what I was feeling, to find out what I was thinking. Tracy K. Smith

Life My Life Feeling Think Thinking Out Would Find Parse Journals Became Lot Times Trying Just Where Different Places Notebooks Page Different Times Early Kept

I am keenly aware that in writing about my mother, I am writing about my aunts' sister, and that in writing about my grandmother, I'm writing about their mother. I know that my honesty about how my view of these people has changed over the years may be painful. Tracy K. Smith

Honesty People Writing Mother Sister Changed About Over Know How Am Years Aunts May Grandmother View Painful Aware

A poem, necessarily, sits at a register that's different from our usual conversational voices. You have to listen more actively to get to the heart of what's being said, what you as a reader or listener are being asked to feel or notice. Tracy K. Smith

I first got caught up in this marvelous feeling of being spoken to in that very direct, private, magical way by a poem when I was really young. I was in grade school and had found an Emily Dickinson poem in a textbook. Tracy K. Smith

School First Feeling Young Way Direct Magical Poem Emily Emily Dickinson Marvelous Had Spoken Got Caught Private Textbook Up Very Grade Grade School Being Really Found

As I've been teaching longer and longer, I realize I learn so much from the voices I'm naturally drawn to, the writers I love on an instinctive level - but I also learn so much from the writers that I have to work to grasp. Tracy K. Smith

Work Love Drawn Voices Writers Instinctive Longer Also Learn Been Realize Much Teaching Naturally Grasp Level

I had to say to myself, 'I haven't written enough about blackness, yet it's part of my consciousness and my lived experience.' I had to get over that anxiety of 'I haven't done this before.' Tracy K. Smith

Myself Experience Anxiety Before Enough Say About Blackness Had Part Written Over Get Done Lived Consciousness

Poetry is not the language we live in. It's not the language of our day-to-day errand-running and obligation-fulfilling, not the language with which we are asked to justify ourselves to the outside world. It certainly isn't the language to which commercial value has been assigned. Tracy K. Smith

World Language Value Live Our Ourselves Has-Been Poetry Outside Outside World Day-To-Day Been Commercial Which Justify Asked Certainly Assigned

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. Tracy K. Smith

Music Great Collective Feeling Before Guide Respond Recognize Ourselves Borders Poetry Through Part Emphasis Toward Understand Effects Buried Us Even Why Deeply Things Image Association

The glib, facile, simplistic, and prefabricated language by which we as consumers are constantly surrounded is a language that flatters us, that urges us to indulge ourselves, to get away from it all, to be unique by opting in, talking back, liking us on Facebook, leaving a review, sharing, retweeting, etc. Tracy K. Smith

Facebook Language Back Ourselves Constantly Facile Consumers Simplistic Sharing Indulge Liking Talking Leaving Review Surrounded Get Which Etc Flatters Urges Us Unique Away

Rather than numbing or drowning out the difficult-to-describe but urgently sensed feelings that are part of being human, poetry invites us to tease them out, to draw them into language that is rooted in intricate thought and strange impulse. Tracy K. Smith

Strange Language Thought Feelings Draw Intricate Out Rather Poetry Part Drowning Invites Than Human Impulse Being Sensed Being Human Them Urgently Us Rooted Tease Numbing

Jacqueline Woodson's books are such a gift to parents and children for their poignant subtlety and lyricism and their willingness to let a reader dwell in the pangs of realization that we sometimes try to protect our children from. Tracy K. Smith

Gift Sometimes Try Parents Our Books Willingness Poignant Protect Reader Dwell Children Subtlety Realization

'Little Women' made me into a reader. Tracy K. Smith

Me Women Made Reader Little

When I first became brave enough to tell people that I wrote poems, so many people would rave to me about Edna St. Vincent Millay's work. I was embarrassed not to have read her, and I think that put me off from reading her for a long time. So many of her poems are just impeccable. Tracy K. Smith

Work Time Me People Long Long Time First Reading Think Enough Embarrassed Tell Would About Poems Impeccable Rave Put Wrote Read Became Off Brave So Many People Just Many Her

Listening to music and lyrics and watching movies, I think, uses a lot of the same muscles we use in reading and experiencing poetry - and yet we somehow forget that we have those when it comes to sitting down with a book of poems. Tracy K. Smith

I want to just go to places where writers don't usually go, where people like me don't usually show up, and say, 'Here are some poems. Do they speak to you? What do you hear in them?' Tracy K. Smith

Me You People Speak Say Some Poems Writers Like Go Hear Up Just Where Want Places Them Show Here

Tracy K. Smith Quotes

No more Tracy K. Smith quotes