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.
Interpretation
Prose allows for a deep examination of events and their implications.
In this quote, Tracy K. Smith emphasizes the power of prose to capture and analyze unfolding events. She highlights how it enables the writer to focus on the drama of a situation and reflect on its causes and effects, thus providing a deeper understanding of narratives and their complexities.
In practice
During a literary discussion, to emphasize the importance of prose in storytelling.
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.
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.
I had to say to myself, 'I haven't written enough about blackness, yet it's part of my consciousness and my lived experience.' I had to get over that anxiety of 'I haven't done this before.'
One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
I work with few colors, what creates the illusion of quantity is that they fell in the right place.
I sang a lot as a little girl and entered competitions. I loved singing in choirs, but it was as I got older that I really found my voice.
Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about...)
Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk about is what they do, not what stops them doing it.
I came to the realization that I can also satisfy my creative side by giving somebody else a chance. I don't have to be in front of the camera for every project.
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