Wade in the Water: Poems
A poetry collection that links the present in the United States with the history of slavery by layering fragments of verse, documentary material, and personal voice. It places contemporary unease within a long continuum of language and history.
Work Information
Poetry stitches history and the present together.
By combining voices, documents, and quotations, the book creates a space where private feeling meets public history. Each reading lets the rhythm of the poems bring layers of memory into view.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Graywolf Pr
- Published
- 2018-04-03
- Pages
- 83 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 16.33 x 1.5 x 23.83 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781555978136
- ISBN-10
- 1555978134
- Price
- 3447 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Poetry/American
Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection The extraordinary new poetry collection by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United States Even the men in black armor, the ones Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else Are they so buffered against, if not love’s blade Sizing up the heart’s familiar meat? We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat. Love: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean. Love: naked almost in the everlasting street, Skirt lifted by a different kind of breeze. —from “Unrest in Baton Rouge” In Wade in the Water , Tracy K. Smith boldly ties America’s contemporary moment both to our nation’s fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith’s signature voice—inquisitive, lyrical, and wry—turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence. Here, private utterance becomes part of a larger choral arrangement as the collection widens to include erasures of The Declaration of Independence and the correspondence between slave owners, a found poem comprised of evidence of corporate pollution and accounts of near-death experiences, a sequence of letters written by African Americans enlisted in the Civil War, and the survivors’ reports of recent immigrants and refugees. Wade in the Water is a potent and luminous book by one of America’s essential poets.
Tracy K. Smith is the author of three previous poetry collections, including Life on Mars , winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and a memoir, Ordinary Light , which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She teaches at Princeton University.
Reviews
-
Very touching, beautifully portraited. One of the best modern poetry book I've read.
I can't say how touching this book is. It speaks of the discrimination against black men, women and children during the civil war and the slavery period, among other things. Beautifully portraited through the erasure genre, which I was introduced for the first time here. The use of historical sources as the source of inspiration makes the poems invaluable.
-
A beautiful tribute to equality
A few weeks ago, I had the amazing privilege of attending an event where Tracy K. Smith came to read her poetry. I had never heard her poetry before, but by the end of the event I was deeply moved, and immediately ordered this book. Smith does captures so well the frustration, heartache, and also hope that is the struggle for equality in America, and her poems helped me to better see where progress has been made as well as where equality is still lacking. Through her words, I was better able to see the racial injustice which persists within the mindset of American society, and I felt more motivated to work to change that mentality. Smith’s poems about environmental responsibility are so poignant as well; the poem in which she compares the Earth to the collective younger sister of humanity hit me hard. It made me think about how vulnerable our world is, and how I would feel if my own little sister were taken advantage of and hurt by others. Overall, I highly recommend this collection of poetry for anyone looking to read writing that is both beautiful and refreshing. Smith is such a talented poet, and while hearing her perform live is of course the best option, her voice still comes through strong in her written poetry. Before reading this collection, I wasn’t really interested in reading new poetry, but this book alone has made me change my mind. Tracy K. Smith is a living testament to the fact that great poetry is not just a thing of the past, but that it has an important place in modern literature as well.
-
Excellent read
A really good read.
-
Tracy K Smith Makes Everything Shimmer, Even Pain
Tracy K Smith is superlative in every way, from her panoramic vision to her vigorous use of the language to her fastidious research. She bores right down to the bone, then presents the reader with a shimmering necklace that illuminates and elucidates. In this uncompromising collection, Smith uses documents from an early-on Prohibitionist who sympathizes with the slaves but can’t quite bring herself to get rid of hers. In the next selection she uses documented letters from African-American Civil War vets and their families trying to get information about lost relations and to recoup unpaid army benefits for their service. It’s brutal history related by a discompassionate yet gentle hand that gives the reader access to the authentic voices of the letters. There are other kinds of poems here too, some biographical, some philosophical—perhaps even a love poem of sorts. This is an important poet and a significant testimony.
-
There is some good poetry here
Sometimes forming words into poems does not result in poetry. Sometimes politics is not best served in poetry. There is a feeling about some of these poems that their message would be even more powerful as argued prose.