For me, a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that poetry serves as a medium for self-exploration and reflection.
Tracy K. Smith's quote suggests that writing or reading poetry offers a valuable chance for introspection. It implies that the act of engaging with poetry allows individuals to question and examine their thoughts, feelings, and experiences, uncovering deeper insights about themselves and their perspectives.
In practice
A speaker at a literary festival sharing insights on the value of poetry in personal growth.
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.
Street art, of course, is political, because it's illegal, so the very act of doing it is an act of defiance.
Any time is the time to make a poem.
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
By definition, poetry works with qualities and dynamics that mainstream society is reluctant to face head-on. It's an interesting phenomenon that by necessity, poetry is just below the radar.
Music must be listened to; it is not enough to hear it. A duck hears also.
There's no doubt I was a bit of a misfit in the Hollywood of the forties. The race for glamour left me far behind. I didn't really want to keep up. I wanted my stardom without the usual trimmings. Because of this, I was branded a rebel at the very least. But I don't regret that for a minute. My appetite was my own and I simply wouldn't have it any other way.
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