The Power of Poetry with Tracy K. Smith
1/25/19 - Poetry is the kind of art that makes you slow down and pay attention. And we can’t imagine a better guide than Tracy K. Smith. Tracy is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and the current U.S. Poet Laureate. She is the author of Wade in the Water, her most recent book of poems. She hosts The Slowdown podcast, which is all about seeing the world through poetry. And she is the editor of American Journal: 50 Poems for Our Time. We listen to Lia Purpura read her poem, “Proximities.” Plus, Aminatou and Ann share the poets and collections they're (re)discovering this year.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Destry Maria Sibley
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
Wade in the Water by Tracy K. Smith
American Journal: 50 Poems for Our Time
"Proximities" by Lia Purpura
Pome, a poem-a-day email
TRANSCRIPT: THE POWER OF POETRY WITH TRACY K. SMITH
[Ads]
(1:08)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: We have an incredible poet on the show today.
Ann: We have a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and also kind of the poet president, the reigning US Poet Laureate.
Aminatou: Yeah.
Ann: Tracy K. Smith is here.
[Theme Song]
Aminatou: Hi Ann Friedman.
Ann: Hello, hello.
Aminatou: I haven't tried my t-hong on yet so we can't talk about that.
Ann: Wow.
Aminatou: I know that you were going to check in but we just can't check in.
(2:00)
Ann: You know, thank you for holding me holding you accountable. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I just really want to talk about it.
Ann: I know, we'll get there next week. Don't worry.
Aminatou: Okay. Speaking of poetry. [Laughs]
Ann: Speaking of Sisqo's The Thong Song.
Aminatou: Speaking of great American poets.
Ann: Yes. [Laughs] This transition. Queen of transitions.
Aminatou: Queen of transition. One day we'll become good at transitions.
Ann: Ugh.
Aminatou: We have an incredible poet on the show today.
Ann: We have a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and also kind of the poet president, the reigning US Poet Laureate.
Aminatou: Yeah.
Ann: Tracy K. Smith is here.
Aminatou: A-mazing. I am very excited about this. Recently when I looked in my life I was like oh, the poets are back man. They're just . . . [Laughs] Like I don't mean in the universe; I mean in my own life. I think in college I knew like one person who was maybe a poet and now fully everybody's a poet.
Ann: Oh, you mean socially in your life poets are trending?
Aminatou: Yes, socially in my life poets are trending. In the Twitter sidebar of my life poetry is trending. One, it makes me really happy because I do like poetry and in French school at least there was a strong emphasis on memorizing poetry when we were growing up. And for years this has been my resolution to be like every year I learn one poem, like I memorize one poem. And I was like I like this. This is how I keep the Alzheimer's at bay.
Ann: Do you want to read -- tell us the poem you have memorized right now?
Aminatou: I won't tell you the poem I'm memorizing this year because I haven't picked it yet. The thing about having poets in your life is 1) as the population of people who work with a specific kind of word, I find generally they have a better sense of humor than most people. That's what I'm saying.
Ann: Precision of language leads to better jokes.
Aminatou: Yes, precision of language leads to much better jokes. But also a thing that I had not fully appreciated for a long time and it's because I am fully an idiot, it is hard making a living as a poet. I think I knew that but you don't fully understand that until it's like the people in your world, and I watch amazing people make amazing work and realize how the marketplace of ideas is very unkind to this kind of labor.
(4:14)
Ann: Right, not a lot of poets on the Forbes 500.
Aminatou: Right. And I'm like put all the poets -- put all the poets on the Forbes 500.
Ann: Right, right.
Aminatou: Like are you kidding me? They're rich in words and ideas. You people are wild. But also it has just been like a great source of joy in my life to have people who enjoy poetry.
Ann: It's true, and I feel like the popular conversation around poetry, at least in the arts and leisure section of the New York Times or whatever, venues that are kind of supposed to be about what's happening in arts and culture more generally, it's like Instagram and poetry. I feel like that is the vector for a lot of conversations about that, the idea that this is a new thing, that people are using technology to find and read poets.
Aminatou: Right.
Ann: And I'm like maybe it is but also I'm like . . .
Aminatou: Like Tumblr's powering a new kind of poetry. [Laughs]
Ann: Yeah, or whatever. And I'm like actually that's how people kind of get access to almost every art form now is social media.
Aminatou: Yeah.
Ann: And it's like not -- I don't know, anyway . . .
Aminatou: With certain things that have been locked in the academic ivory tower there is a release in being like oh, we can be very democratic about this. You know, calling somebody a Twitter poet or an Instagram poet, people say that very dismissively.
Ann: Of course, yeah.
Aminatou: Like it's always dismissive. I really chafe at that and I really don't like it because it goes back to the basic bitch conversation of who is consuming this? But for me the reason that I appreciate it, and I will be honest in saying that I was also dismissive of it in the beginning. You know, where I was like what's going on here? Everybody is writing in lower case. What's . . .
Ann: Lower case, too many commas, and you're a poet.
Aminatou: Right. You know, there's a lot of Instagrammy comings happening here. Once you take the cynicism away I was like oh, wow, I have curated an Instagram feed for myself where every day I'm confronted with beautiful words and beautiful feelings I have to sit with. I like that. But I also fully realize that a lot of the people who get dismissed as Instagram poets are mostly women and people of color. Is it an accident that those are the same people that are generally not recognized in the academic sense of who gets to be a fancy poet? And so that's a question that I struggle with a lot and I wrestle with.
Ann: 100%, yeah.
(6:28)
Aminatou: And so, you know, and generally I just think that it's good to be 90% less dismissive of things that you don't know a lot about and just fully learn about them. Getting poetry on Instagram from women and people of color, I'm like that's been very healing for me and I like it.
Ann: Yeah, and I have to say the experience of reading poetry either on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, whatever, or in my inbox, like I get an amazing poem a day email that has honestly changed my morning email routine.
Aminatou: It's one of the best gifts you gave me was forwarding one of those emails to me.
Ann: Ugh, we will link to it in the show notes but it is curated by someone named Matthew Ogle and I really can't tell you how nice it is to slow down. So both when I come across a poem in my Instagram feed and when I open this email every morning being like it's never that many words cumulatively but just being like I'm going to think a little bit harder about these words than I do scanning headlines or reading an email that's about something work-wise. It really brings a pause into my day that I find invaluable.
Aminatou: I agree. Let's listen to you talk to Tracy K. Smith.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: Tracy thank you so much for being on the podcast.
(7:48)
Tracy: Oh thank you for having me.
Ann: I want to start at your beginning with poetry because I think that it is one of those art forms that maybe if people are not introduced young they can find kind of intimidating.
Tracy: Yeah. It's funny I have young children and I see that poetry is something that they naturally feel comfortable with and sometimes I talk to them and I feel like they're speaking in poetry. But I think something happens around probably junior high or high school where anxiety becomes a part of that process. Somehow I missed that but I think it's because I wasn't really taught poetry in school in memorable at least ways. I wasn't traumatized. But I lived in a house where when I was bored I was encouraged to pick up a book and read and so often what happened was I would be kind of carried away by the sounds of words, by surprising ways of looking at things. And so poetry always felt kind of like something playful to me. I got serious about writing poems when I was a sophomore at Harvard and I became aware of the many living poets working in English, many African-American poets whose work I'd never seen, and the many peers at my school who were my age and also thinking very seriously about becoming poets. It seemed like a really exciting proposition.
Ann: Do you remember there being a moment or a particular peer or writer where you felt that switch and were like oh, I want to get serious about this and practice it?
Tracy: Well I remember going -- I was already writing poems, already interested in taking poetry workshops although I don't think I'd taken my first one by that point. But I was a sophomore at Harvard and I went to hear Kevin Young give a reading. He was a student, he was going to be graduating, and he had written a creative thesis of poems. And so I went to hear him read and I thought oh, wow, this is the real thing and he's young just like me but he seems as large and as passionate as the writers that I admire out in the world or in history. And so I think I got this real sense of actual possibility and a kind of hope or inspiration that seemed reachable because he was a friend.
(10:20)
Ann: I love that, like the idea that it's not just about someone you admire -- some work you admire by someone who feels far away maybe, or you know, unapproachable genius, but someone you're also in community with being so powerful.
Tracy: Yeah. I think that's really necessary. I think it's probably necessary for most pursuits but I think the arts are it's especially true. And maybe that's because it seems like magic. When you see a work of art you think oh, this came out fully formed from somebody who is probably well into their life and is reflecting in some way or just has this natural genius. But to recognize that this is something that a young person or a person who is not so unlike you is capable of means there are fewer steps that you need to take before that possibility might be real for you. And I think that made a big difference for me. I think it made me more adamant about what I knew I wanted to do, and when it's art you hear a lot of well-meaning voices who say "Oh, maybe that's not what you should try and choose for your career. Maybe that should just be a hobby." So it's important to have those models in all stages I think.
Ann: Yeah, I was actually about to ask you about that because I went to journalism school where a lot of my peers were people who in their heart of hearts wanted to be novelists or something like that but had this idea that oh, I need something that is on the Life board game kind of career. That is not artist. And I'm wondering how you responded to some of that criticism or some of that feedback I'm sure you got of poetry as not just an artistic pursuit or a creative passion but a livelihood?
(12:05)
Tracy: Yeah. I knew that the people telling me to re-think my choices loved me and so their advice came from a place of love and worry. It was my parents mostly and older siblings.
Ann: Naturally.
Tracy: But I also thank god I had examples of people who were making a life at poetry. I had my teachers. I had all the many poets whose work I'd been reading and who I'd gone to hear read and talk about their work. Then I had peers who I said oh, well Kevin Young is going to graduate school. That's what he's doing after this and so that's what somebody who wants to be a poet does, you go to graduate school. And then from there you publish a book.
So I had this kind of a step-by-step road map that I had pieced together from the different examples and somehow that bolstered my sense of certainty and I think my stubbornness. And I always tell my students you have to be willing to be a little bit stubborn about what's important to you because there will be people who don't see it the way you see it. And in an attempt to help you what they might do is attempt to dissuade you.
Ann: Yeah, and it can be very difficult I think for everyone starting out in their professional lives but particularly for people who want to make a living as artists to know who to listen to and what is a viable model? I think that's a very tough thing to kind of hear objectively described versus just like living through.
Tracy: Yeah. And it's a gamble in some ways too because it's not like you're following a path where everything including your first job is going to be mapped out, which you know, medicine feels safe because we see how people progress down that path with relative ease or safety. There were some rough years that I endured.
Ann: [Laughs]
(14:00)
Tracy: And now I think I needed them in order to really become an artist because it changed my relationship to life and to reality and it heightened the urgency that characterized the thinking that I was doing. But it's a choice that needs to be thought through.
Ann: How has your relationship with poetry changed as you've gone deeper into it as a career? I mean I think about this a lot about things that are driven by passion or self-expression. You know, when it also becomes your livelihood I think that there is some compartmentalizing that inevitably has to happen. I'm wondering, you know, maybe this is a long-winded way of saying what poetry do you keep for you? Or how do you keep the spark alive with your passion for it?
Tracy: Yeah, that's a good question. In some ways I feel really lucky because I haven't felt the need to rush to producer more books which I know is one of the things that some writers feel. You know, I've got to publish another book so I can maybe get this job or so that maybe I'll get this other advance and can sustain this practice that I have. And sometimes you make sacrifices in the interest of practicality. I like to be able to take my time with new work and let it come from what for me feels like a place of urgency and to live with it for a little while so I can decide whether I stand by it. And I know that not everybody has that luxury.
(15:40)
I think one of the great things about having become professional and for poets that often means teaching, having a faculty position somewhere, is that I've been pushed to read much more widely than I normally might have if I were just reading based on my own taste. I have been pursued to codify my ideas about the art form that I practice simply so that I can teach it to students and say these are some formal concerns. These are craft-based concerns. These are thematic and social concerns that we can talk about in relationship to what you're seeking to do. And somehow that's expanded my own sense of my own artistic vocabulary and I think it's fed me to commit to nurturing young talent because it means that I have, I don't know, those muscles are more honed and I can turn them towards my own work and nurturing the new questions that I have as a person and an artist. So for me I feel like it's been good. I have an optimistic view of what professionalism means but I also, you know, I'm linked to an institution that makes it easy for me to take my time.
Ann: Right. It's interesting, you know, hearing you talk about that I've been thinking about the body of your work that is poetry about space and science and the physical world. And, you know, how we're really taught that art and science are two separate areas of inquiry or two separate modes, then hearing you talk a little about finding a language for or structures for or breaking down -- trying to explain what it is you love about a poem or demystifying the art part of it and maybe getting a little bit more not like scientific method about a poem but maybe there's some equivalency there. And I wonder if you can talk a little about art and science and whether that rings true to you that they're really that separate.
(17:44)
Tracy: Well I mean my hope is that these are different languages that are in pursuit of what could be compatible or similar questions and they are questions that can be pursued quantitatively and logically and they're questions that can be pursued by means of the imagination and all the different things that are connected to that. And because I lack the quantitative reasoning skills the imagination is the route that I have access to. So reading about new scientific discovery or reading the beautiful ways that scientists describe their own process, the beautiful metaphors they employ in order to make something that's highly specialized, understandable to the general audience, all of that I think feeds my imagination in ways that I've kind of run with in earlier work.
And I think there is something true to thinking that art is if not a science, it's a discipline and sometimes I'm asked "Well how can you teach writing?" but we teach dance. [Laughs] We teach painting and we don't have as much of a quandary around those kinds of pursuits. I think that teaching students to move around with more skill and mindfulness within language is something that can be easily done. It can mean the difference between a really talented student struggling to kind of get off the ground, to kind of invent the wheel in each successive poem, and helping that student get familiar with a framework that can allow the genius that they have to move forward in more powerful ways.
Ann: Do you think the same is true for readers of poetry? That you can be taught to move around in language as a consumer or as a reading participant in a poem?
Tracy: Oh, I think definitely. And one of the first steps is being untaught all of the fear and anxiety that comes on when we think oh, there's a message to this poem. This is a symbol for something that's buried at the center of this poem. There's a single answer to the question of this poem when the reality . . .
Ann: Right, can I solve the poem? [Laughs]
Tracy: Yeah, exactly. How much time will it take me to sole this? When in reality a poem is an invitation to participate in a process and we have the tools at our disposal. We have, you know, a sense of sound, rhythm, movement, music. We have the ability to associate between seemingly disparate things and we do it all the time. We do it every time we sleep and have a dream where one person and one context bump up against other people and other contexts that don't make logical sense but that speak to us and have a dramatic effect upon us in the context of a dream. I think poems take advantage of a similar process. And there are other things that poems do too that we can respond to viscerally without having the name for what that reaction is based in. The name can come and we can talk about it in those terms but we don't have to in order to appreciate it. So I think we can be taught to relax and respond to the things that are happening in a poem.
Ann: Do you see that as part of your job in the Poet Laureate role? And maybe you can talk a little bit about what does it mean to accept that title and what does that entail?
Tracy: Oh yeah, I can definitely talk about, you know, trying to alleviate anxiety. [Laughter] That's not part of the job description but it's something that I feel passionately about because I meet so many people and ever since I started calling myself a poet I've met people who say "Oh, ooh, I'm afraid of poetry." That's not me. Or "I don't get that." And I think you do but there's something that is keeping you from recognizing that, so that's a part of what I've been doing on the road. I've been reading the poems of other American poets and having conversations with strangers in a room about what they hear and notice and it's amazing how far those conversations can take us into, you know, people's private experiences, their memories, their hopes, the associations that poems activate for them. And it's a really beautiful way of I think kind of being alive together. It also makes us mindful of the fact that poems are about community because someone is talking to you and hoping that you listen. So that's been I guess kind of one of my chief goals as Poet Laureate.
(22:42)
Ann: Right, delivering the invitations to participate in the process that is a poem. [Laughs]
Tracy: Yeah, exactly.
[Music and Ads]
(25:32)
Ann: I'm curious about how -- I mean did someone just call you out of the blue and be like "Hey, you want this job?" How does one become a Poet Laureate? [Laughs]
Tracy: Yeah, it's one of those mysterious things where you are notified "You have been chosen. Would you like to assume this responsibility?" And I had to kind of think for a minute because I've grown up watching Poets Laureate do great things and I thought what can I bring to this? What can I do? And then ultimately I got excited about the prospect of bringing people to this thing that to me seems deeply human and deeply natural and also necessary. I think poems restore us to our large, original selves and there's so much in our society that kind of chips away at that and says "No, no, you're small. You fit into this category and this is what you think because this is what people like you think." And poems give us a reason to say no, that's not true.
Ann: And so who . . . I mean truly though is there a body of people that picks you? I don't mean to get super basic and mechanical but I'm always so curious about embodying a role like this there's a statement probably about your work or your track record as a convener or an information deliverer where there must e some people who are like "We thought about who would be the right voice for this moment and they thought of you." And I'm curious about it can't be like bureaucrats right? I'm so curious.
Tracy: It's a special group. So the decision comes down to the librarian of Congress, so right now it's Dr. Carla Hayden. But she's got a staff of people who are working to give her suggestions. There's a poetry and literature center at the Library of Congress that takes that responsibility on. It's mysterious but I understand there is a system behind it.
Ann: Sure. And I'm curious about, you know, audiences for different things. I'm curious as Poet Laureate if you're like wow, just all of America. That's who I'm speaking to. How did you think about that aspect of your job and who are you trying to reach specifically?
(27:42)
Tracy: Yeah, that is a good question and I'm glad I didn't start thinking in those terms because then it would be overwhelming. But when I reflect on what I've done, what I'm doing, and how I think I'm . . . I'm not thinking in the way that I do in a classroom of student poets and I'm not thinking precisely in the way that I think or talk when I'm talking to other poets. You know, it's not shop talk and it's not an audience that I know has a demonstrated passion for this thing. So what I'm trying to do is to say why do I think poetry is important for everybody even if they're not going to become poets. And what are the poems that seem to be offering the most accessible invitations to what might be a new way of thinking and listening? And I start with those.
But then I think well, if that excites you then maybe you'd want to take another step and here's a poem that uses language differently. It's not quite so straightforward but it speaks in terms of, you know, sound or in terms of images that we can readily relate to but that are not strung along in familiar sentences. And so I think what I've been trying to do is be, you know, almost suggest . . . there's a gateway that's right here and it st arts with maybe a poem like this and then it's populated with other approaches and possibilities within language. I'm always aware that there is somebody in the audience who might feel a little trusty or as I've said a little apprehensive and so I'm also really eager to emphasize the fact that this should not be work. This is about receiving some things almost in the way we listen to a song without anxiety and we talk about what the song makes us hear and see and feel and think.
(29:48)
Ann: I'm curious if there are particular poems that maybe you have relied on in the recent past as an invitation or a gateway.
Tracy: Well I've put together a little anthology in my first year as Poet Laureate called American Journal: 50 Poems For Our Time. And that's what I've been taking on the road with me this past year and giving out. The library of Congress has generously bought copies to give to everybody at these events. And so there's some poems that I kind of often will start with. One is the very first poem in the book which is called Second Estrangement and it's by Aracelis Girmay who is a poet of Eritrean and Puerto Rican descent. It speaks to you as if you are a you. It begins "Raise your hand those of you who have been a child lost in a market or a mall." And suddenly I hear myself in the first line because I've been a child. I want to raise my hand. I hear myself in the second line because I've been lost before. And suddenly without realizing it too much I'm in this poem and I'm walking along a speaker who's guiding me through an experience. So that's an exciting poem because anybody seems ready to respond.
And then there's some poems that topically also seem useful. Poems about family. So there's a poem in the book by Natalie Diaz called My Brother at 3 a.m. and it's a family story about kind of a harrowing scene where a mother and son and another sibling are kind of in the presence of this addiction-based drama. And the poem is very clear, it uses repetition, and it draws you in in a really emphatic way as well. It's easy to talk about. Those poems kind of lay the groundwork for some of the poems that are surprising in other ways.
Ann: Right. And talk about the audiences that you're typically in front of. I mean are you going to libraries? Who are the people you're meeting?
Tracy: I've been going to lots of different types of places. Libraries are definitely a place that I tend to visit when I go to different communities because they're kind of a lifeline, especially in a small community, a library is a community nexus point. And so there are families that are different generations and book lovers in one way or another. But I've also gone into some really specialized settings like addiction rehab centers or retirement homes or even prisons and detention centers. And there you have a real mix, people who remember poetry, love poetry, don't have anything to do with poetry, and so what we hear is responses that have to do with wow, I'm surprised this poem speaks to my experience of this place in this way which is inevitably similar to and different from other people's. And so suddenly we have a kind of like call and response that begins to happen around each poem.
Ann: Right. I mean and that particular element of oh, I'm surprised at the similarity here feels at least to me to be especially important in this political moment. And I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about being the Poet Laureate during this presidency in particular. I know you have not been the Poet Laureate under other presidencies.
Tracy: [Laughs] Yeah.
Ann: But I mean, you know, for me so much of your work addresses injustice or issues that I think are very very much at the forefront and in the headlines right now. Not that I think a Poet Laureate should necessarily be an activist or a newsy spokesperson but I have to imagine that what's happening in the world informs some of the choices you make related to your position.
(33:45)
Tracy: Well I think it's a really good time for poetry and it's exciting to be able to say to others "No, no, you do need this. You do need this in your life." And just thinking about myself I turn to the page when I have a question, a fear, an anxiety, or a wish and this is the a that's full of all of those things in every direction and it's exciting to be able to say here's a poem that invites us to interrogate our relationship to this situation. Let's do that together.
I feel like language is something that we should always be mindful of and I feel like it's not even an administration but I think it's the world that we live in that's saying "No, no, you don't have to sort through the intricacies of the grammar or word choice here. Just say this, click on this. This is what you mean." And so I feel like the 21st century has brought with it a whole host of invitations to let go of our thought process, let go of the rigor and the singularity of our unique perspectives and I think that's dangerous for many reasons. And, you know, a poem kind of . . . it's almost like a little bit of exercise that says words matter and the same old words aren't really going to be appropriate for you and your specific situation so let's do the work to get to what it would take to tell you what it feels like to be you. I think that can never be over-valued.
Ann: Right. Yeah, and it's interesting, we are really living in an era of rhetorical shortcuts where it's like the leap from this word signals XYZ about intention without really thinking about on either side, whether using to or receiving it what has gone into that phrasing as something that I've been thinking about. There was like an obnoxious drunk man in a bar recently who used the word snowflake when he was going off on something. And I was like wow, it's really interesting that that word which might've seemed to me kind of poetic 15 years ago . . .
Tracy: Right.
(36:05)
Ann: . . . to talk about a concept is so politically loaded and I'm like oh, this tells me all these things about you. And they may or may not have been true, right? But when I heard that word I was like I think I know something more about you now.
Tracy: Yeah. That's the thing that really scares me, all of the shorthands. Even the little shorthands that have started popping up for me in my email where I could either click on the prefabricated reply . . .
Ann: I take that. [Laughs]
Tracy: Or I could take the time to write it out. All of this tells me that there is this urge coming from some place inviting us to think about others as something that needs to be processed out of our way or processed so that we can be sure of who and what we're dealing with or who and what we're trying to persuade to our opinion. And I think it's . . . it's the opposite of the empathy and compassion that probably could go a long way towards solving some of the problems that we're in the midst of right now. I find it frightening and dehumanizing that the options available to me are I can do the default ignoring of other people that has been validated by advertising and by, you know, all of the shorthand stuff in our world or I can slow down and say "Oh, actually this is a person I could actually choose to see and consider and maybe even be changed or surprised." I hate that there are so many more voices telling us just process them. Just move past. You need to get what you want. You need to get where you're already late to be. And I think it's dangerous.
(37:52)
Ann: To that end I would love to hear you talk about a poem that stopped you or, you know, made you reconsider maybe a rhetorical track you had been on or something like that recently. It doesn't have to be like the best poem you read in the last six months kind of thing, but in the past week or two weeks what's something that gave you pause?
Tracy: Oh, well I've been working on episodes for The Slowdown, my podcast, which is great because it means every day I get to stop and say I want to think deeply, or just intentionally, about life and how this poem speaks to it. So there's a poem that came up recently called Proximities by a poet named Lia Purpura. It begins a man walks into a café but it's not a joke.
[Clip Starts]
Lia Purpura: "Proximities. A man walks into a coffee shop but it's not a joke. I bought coffee there last summer, small, with milk. It's never a joke to walk in or out of a shop unharmed. It's easy to forget you aren't a person being shot at. I'm not. I wasn't, though I was there last summer not shot at and I never knew it. Did not once think it. Thinking it now the moment things, it sheers, and I move back to other coffee shops where I never fell, or bled, and then I sit for a while with my regular cup and feel things collapse or go on, I can't tell."
[Clip Ends]
(39:30)
Tracy: We live in such a great proximity to danger and to violence and to terror. It's quiet poem that uses conversational language to remind me that, you know, it's important to be grateful. And I think it's also a poem of grief. You know, very quietly under the surface for all the moments when people are not safe.
Ann: Tracy thank you so much for being on Call Your Girlfriend.
Tracy: Oh thank you. It's been a real pleasure.
[Interview Ends]
Ann: Tracy K. Smith is the author of many books, most recently the collection of poems Wade in the Water, and she also hosts the Slowdown podcast which you heard her mention. That is all about seeing the world through poetry. And if you want a taste of what she is loving and reading in poetry right now you can check out American Journal: 50 Poems for Our Time which she edited.
Aminatou: Who are some poets that you are enjoying right now?
Ann: That's a funny question because maybe I'm like wow, now I'm thinking about . . . I rely heavily on other people curating poetry for me in real time. I have a Nikki Giovanni collection that I got last year.
Aminatou: Yes. Yes.
Ann: One of her later -- like a later collection, I want to say it's from the late '90s, that is about what was happening in the political moment in the US. Like there's a very embarrassing poem of her defending Bill Clinton.
Aminatou: Ooh.
Ann: But a lot of it is also about her health and is about the body and the frailty of the body. The collection is called Nikki Giovanni: Blues For All the Changes.
Aminatou: I love that.
Ann: What about you?
Aminatou: I have been on a very strong June Jordan kick recently. June Jordan was an activist and a poet and a playwright and truly one of the most amazing humans of her generation and of many generations. And you cannot go wrong picking any collection by her. I mostly like reading black women poets. I was like this is -- it is an education I never got and it's something that again for me has been very eye-opening and healing. I've been reading a lot of Audre Lorde poems. I'm very familiar with all of her other work. The poetry has never been . . .
Ann: You mean like her essays?
Aminatou: Yes, I'm very familiar with her essays. And actually when you sent me The Cancer Journals when I was going through cancer last year . . . [Laughs] Every time I say it I'm like did we really do that? We did that. But anyway . . .
(42:12)
Ann: I'm like did I really send you The Cancer Journals when you were -- yeah.
Aminatou: Listen, honestly, you sent me The Cancer Journals but you didn't send them to me because you were like you have cancer. You were like "Read this one specific thing." You had annotated a thing and it was like I needed to read it in the moment. So we are not going to dismiss how amazing we were in that moment, okay? We beat cancer last year.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: Anyway I am very familiar with Audre Lorde's essays and her big non-fiction ideas and I realized that for somebody who I studied so much and I know so much I didn't know anything about her poetry. And it has really been amazing to be like oh, yeah, here's somebody who you wrote op-eds and essays and criticism but also you were fully writing poems in here. And that's been very, very, very cool. On the contemporary front I've really been enjoying friend of the podcast Morgan Parker.
Ann: Ugh, yes.
Aminatou: Who is -- what a voice. What a voice. I love Morgan's brain. Yeah, you're right, it is like a different kind of reading speed. I just find that reading poetry keeps you . . . it slows your brain down and it also stretches your mind a lot because you're like these words are doing a lot. What is happening here?
Ann: Right, like one word in a poem lifting so much, doing so much work.
Aminatou: You're like hmm, we stand syntax. We stand . . . [Laughter] We stand stanzas. We stand . . . we stand prose. What is going on here? It's like a lot. And I just find that it's a different kind of reading but also it opens your mind and your heart to something different and it's like when I think about who people say are the great American poems I'm like actually I'm going to tell you who. Like Lucille Clifton, fucking great American poet. Audre Lord, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Morgan Parker, Saey Jones (?), like great American poets. And so it is both sad to be my age and be like oh, I fully don't know anything about this and also amazing to be like I still have a lot to learn in life and it is delightful.
Ann: Ugh, yes to that.
Aminatou: See you on the Internet boo-boo.
Ann: See you on the Internet.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet, on our website callyourgirlfriend.com, you can download the show anywhere you listen to your favs, or on Apple Podcasts where we would love it if you left us a review. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. We're on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at @callyrgf. You can even leave us a short and sweet voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music is composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs, our logos are by Kenesha Sneed, our associate producer is Destry Maria Sibley. This podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.