Sneak Peek: Tracy K. Smith former US Poet Laureate 2017-19

We’re drawn to poetry I believe because the most emphatic moments and experiences in our lives are often characterized by some sort of ambivalence. Poems help us take that apart; poems help us find language that illuminates those dualities or multiplicities that live within things that we think are supposed to be consistent, coherent and unified. What I think poetry does is it begins to make us brave enough to do that even when we’re looking up away from the pages of books. What I like about poetry is that it asks us to listen in many different directions and to put pressure on our own impulses, our own assertions, even our own wishes or recollections or the things that we cook up out of just thin air. The formal rigor of poetry urges us to think more rigorously about language and that I think urges us to think more inventively, rigorously and honestly about meaning.

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