My hope is to create spaces where people of all stripes can come together and speak at a lower decibel level. We make more sense that way. We sound more like our real selves that way.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of creating calm environments for meaningful conversations.
Tracy K. Smith's quote reflects the idea that in quieter, more inclusive spaces, people can engage in deeper dialogue and express their true selves. It suggests that when conversations are conducted at a lower volume, they become more thoughtful and authentic, fostering understanding and connection among individuals from diverse backgrounds.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about community building.
We all need poetry. The moments in our lives that are characterized by language that has to do with necessity or the market, or just, you know, things that take us away from the big questions that we have, those are the things that I think urge us to think about what a poem can offer.
I wanted to write the kind of poetry that people read and remembered, that they lived by - the kinds of lines that I carried with me from moment to moment on a given day without even having chosen to.
I love the sense of looking at the sad, paltry, and yet very familiar spectacle that we must make from moment to moment in our lives, and in our frenzy, as something that's as out there as alien life.
Losing my father made me want to find out if I could come up with a version of God or the afterlife that I could feel like was acceptable now that both my parents are in it.
Prose is something that is persistent in staying in one place long enough to not only zero in on the dramatic effect of something that might have happened, or something that might have been seen, but also in watching how it played out and thinking about the cause and the effect.
A question is a pursuit, an invitation to envision and explore a series of possibilities, to struggle and empathize and doubt and believe. The question moves, whereas our sense of what an answer is can often be static, a stopping point.
Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.
The skull regarded Ralph like one who knows all the answers and won't tell.
When there’s something in the Word of God that I don’t like, the problem is not with the Word of God, it’s with me.
A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over... is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.
It is never smart, even in a strong democracy, to declare some debate off limits. In a weakening democracy it is catastrophic.
Our society does reward beauty on the outside over health on the inside. Women must not be blamed for choosing short-term beauty "fixes" that harm our long-term health, since our life spans are inverted under the beauty myth, and there is no great social or economic incentive for women to live a long time.
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