Tracy K. Smith
| Tracy K. Smith | |
|---|---|
 Smith in October 2012 | |
| Born | April 16, 1972 |
| Occupation | Poet, educator |
| Nationality | American |
| Genres | Poetry |
| Notable award(s) |
James Laughlin Award (2006) Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2012) |
Tracy K. Smith (born April 16, 1972) is an African-American poet and educator.[1] She has published three collections of poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize for a 2011 collection, Life on Mars.[2][3] About this collection, Joel Brouwer wrote in 2011: "Smith shows herself to be a poet of extraordinary range and ambition. ... As all the best poetry does, Life on Mars first sends us out into the magnificent chill of the imagination and then returns us to ourselves, both changed and consoled."[4]
Life and career
Smith is a native of Falmouth, Massachusetts.[1] She was raised in northern California in a family with "deep roots" in Alabama. She received her B.A. from Harvard University in 1994, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia University in 1997. From 1997 to 1999 she was a Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University. She has taught at the City University of New York, the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University. In 2005 she joined the faculty of Princeton University, where she is professor of creative writing.[5][6]
In his review of Life on Mars, Troy Jollimore selects Smith's poem "My god, it's full of stars" as particularly strong, "making use of images from science and science fiction to articulate human desire and grief, as the speaker allows herself to imagine the universe:"[3]
- ... sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time,
- Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke.
- So that I might be sitting now beside my father
- As he raises a lit match to the bowl of his pipe
- For the first time in the winter of 1959.
In his review of the collection, Joel Brouwer also quoted at length from this poem, writing that "for Smith the abyss seems as much a space of possibility as of oblivion:"[4]
- Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone,
- That the others have come and gone — a momentary blip —
- When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic,
- Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel
- Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding,
- ...
Dan Chiasson writes of another aspect of the collection, "The issues of power and paternalism suggest the deep ways in which this is a book about race. Smith’s deadpan title is itself racially freighted: we can’t think about one set of fifties images, of Martians and sci-fi comics, without conjuring another, of black kids in the segregated South. Those two image files are situated uncannily close to each other in the cultural cortex, but it took this book to connect them."[7]
Smith lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Raphael Allison, and their three children.[8]
Books
- The Body’s Question. Graywolf Press. 2003. ISBN 978-1-55597-391-9.
- Duende. Graywolf Press. 2007. ISBN 978-1-55597-475-6.
- Life on Mars. Graywolf Press. 2011. ISBN 978-1-55597-584-5.
Contributor
- Poems, Poets, Poetry
- Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook
- State of the Union: 50 Political Poems
- When She Named Fire
- Efforts and Affection: Women Poets on Mentorship
- The McSweeney's Book of Poets Picking Poets
- Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century
- The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry
- Gathering Ground : A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade
- Poetry Daily: 366 Poems from the World's Most Popular Poetry Website
- Poetry 30: Thirty-Something Thirty-Something American Poets
- H.L. Hix, ed. (2008). New Voices: Contemporary Poetry from the United States. Irish Pages. ISBN 978-0-9544257-9-1.
Awards, grants, fellowships
- Grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation.
- Fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.
- Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award.
- Cave Canem Prize (2002) for the The Body's Question. This award honors the best first book by an African-American poet; Smith's book was chosen by Kevin Young.[6]
- Whiting Writers' Award in 2005 for poetry. This award is for emerging writers.
- James Laughlin Award in 2006 for Duende. This award from the Academy of American Poets honors the best second volume of a poet published in the US.[9]
- Essence Magazine's Literary Award in 2008 for Duende.[10] The award honors the best African-American literature.
- Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in 2010. Hans Magnus Enzensberger became Smith's mentor for one year as part of this program; their experience working together was described in a short article by Philip Dodd.[11]
- Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2012 for Life on Mars (Graywolf Press), "a collection of bold, skillful poems, taking readers into the universe and moving them to an authentic mix of joy and pain."[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Tracy K. Smith". Academy of American Poets. Retrieved 2012-04-18.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "The 2012 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Poetry". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-04-23. With short biography and publisher's description.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Jollimore, Troy (April 17, 2012). "Book World: Tracy K. Smith’s 2012 Pulitzer-winning poems are worth a read". The Washington Post.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Brouwer, Joel (August 26, 2011). "Poems of Childhood, Grief and Deep Space". The New York Times.
- ↑ Saxon, Jamie (April 16, 2012). "UPDATE: Princeton's Tracy K. Smith wins Pulitzer Prize for poetry". Princeton University.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Tracy K. Smith Web site". Archived from the original on 2008-10-11.
- ↑ Chiasson, Dan (August 8, 2011). "Other Worlds: New poems by Tracy K. Smith and Dana Levin". The New Yorker: 71–73. Review of Life on Mars. Chiasson notes that "... it's fitting that to write about the Space Age Smith turns to forms that predate the modern world (including a terrific example of the villanelle, that old troubadour invention, about the euthanizing of geese at J.F.K. Airport)." The villanelle is "Solstice".
- ↑ "Bios of 2005 Whiting Writers' Award Recipients". Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. Archived from the original on 2011-07-16.
- ↑ "James Laughlin Award". Academy of American Poets. Retrieved 2012-04-24.
- ↑ "ESSENCE's Literary Awards Winners". Essence Magazine. February 1, 2008.
- ↑ Dodd, Philip. "A Meeting of Minds". Cycle 5. Retrieved 2012-04-23.
Further reading
- "Seven Poets Guest-Edited by Tracy K. Smith". Guernica Magazine. October 15, 2007.
- "Fiction review: Duende". Publishers Weekly. May 21, 2007. "Federico García Lorca famously described duende in relation to flamenco music, but understood it as the dark wellspring for any artistic endeavor. As interpreted by Smith in her Laughlin Award–winning second collection, duende is the unforgiving place where the soul confronts emotion, acknowledges death and finds poetry." Starred review of Smith's second collection.
External links
Online poetry
- "Tracy K. Smith". From the Fishouse. Retrieved 2012-04-18. Short biography and links to audio recordings of Smith reading her poetry and responding to audience questions.
- "Self-portrait as the Letter Y". Post Road Magazine (7). Fall/Winter 2003. Retrieved 2012-04-19.
- "Duende". Academy of American Poets.
- "My God, It's Full of Stars". Bibbins, Mark, ed. (October 1, 2010). "The Poetry Section - Tracy K. Smith". The Awl.
- "Tracy K. Smith". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 2012-04-24. Links to several of Smith's poems.
Bibliography
- Tracy K. Smith at Library of Congress Authorities, with 3 catalog records
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