Political Poetry Is Hot Again. The Poet Laureate Explores Why, and How. (The New York Times)

In the mid-1990s, when I was a student of creative writing, there prevailed a quiet but firm admonition to avoid composing political poems. It was too dangerous an undertaking, one likely to result in didacticism and slackened craft. No, in American poetry, politics was the domain of the few and the fearless, poets like Adrienne Rich or Denise Levertov, whose outsize conscience justified such risky behavior. Even so, theirs weren’t the voices being discussed in workshops and craft seminars.

On our mindsTracy K. SmithDecember 17, 2018Tracy K. Smith, poet laureate, poetry, Politics, new york times

Home on Earth - Review of Tracy K. Smith's "Wade in The Water"

Wade in the Waters is Tracy K. Smith’s fourth collection of poetry, and it follows her 2011 Pulitzer Prize winning Life on Mars. In Life on Mars, Smith travels away from earth and its troubles to mourn, meditate and maybe to reconcile the loss of anchor. In this collection, she floats back only to find that the troubles and trespass she has left behind remain waiting for her reckoning.

Essays and Reviews, LiteratureJoanna SitJune 15, 2018Steve Cannon, a gathering of the tribes, Joanna Sit, Tracy K. Smith