97 Quotes by Tracy K. Smith

How wonderful would it be if trust, or even love, might be possible between any of us — or even all of us. I mean, if we let ourselves believe such a thing is possible.

This is why I love poems: they invite me to sit down and listen to a voice speaking thoughtfully and passionately about what it feels like to be alive.

This is why I love poems: they require me to sit still, listen deeply, and imagine putting myself in someone else's unfamiliar shoes. The world I return to when the poem is over seems fuller and more comprehensible as a result.

everything/ that ever was still is, somewhere

We saw to the edge of all there is - So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.

Look, I want to say,The worst thing you can imagine has alreadyZipped up its coat and is heading backUp the road to wherever it came from.

I shut my ears, averted my eyes, turning instead to what I thought at the time was pain's antidote: silence. I was wrong... Silence feeds pain, allows it to fester and thrive. What starves pain, what forces it to release its grip, is speech, the voice upon which rides the story, this is what happened; this is what I have refused to let claim me.

Sometimes, small minds seem to take the day. Election fraud. A migratory plague. Less and less surprises us as odd.

For me, a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit.