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    Wade in the Water: Poems
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    Wade in the Water: Poems
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    Wade in the Water: Poems
    Ebook97 pages54 minutes

    Wade in the Water: Poems

    By Tracy K. Smith

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    About this ebook

    Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize
    Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection

    The extraordinary new poetry collection by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United States

    Even the men in black armor, the ones
    Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else

    Are they so buffered against, if not love’s blade
    Sizing up the heart’s familiar meat?

    We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat.
    Love: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean.

    Love: naked almost in the everlasting street,
    Skirt lifted by a different kind of breeze.

    —from “Unrest in Baton Rouge”

    In Wade in the Water, Tracy K. Smith boldly ties America’s contemporary moment both to our nation’s fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith’s signature voice—inquisitive, lyrical, and wry—turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence. Here, private utterance becomes part of a larger choral arrangement as the collection widens to include erasures of The Declaration of Independence and the correspondence between slave owners, a found poem comprised of evidence of corporate pollution and accounts of near-death experiences, a sequence of letters written by African Americans enlisted in the Civil War, and the survivors’ reports of recent immigrants and refugees. Wade in the Water is a potent and luminous book by one of America’s essential poets.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 3, 2018
    ISBN9781555978631
    Author

    Tracy K. Smith

    Tracy K. Smith, guest editor, served as United States Poet Laureate from 2017–2019 and is the author of four acclaimed collections of poetry, including, most recently, Wade in the Water and Life on Mars, which received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2012. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2015. Educated at Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford, she is the Roger S. Berlind ‘52 Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University.

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    Reviews for Wade in the Water

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    • 4/5
      Broken into three parts; this stunning collection of poetry is lyrical and deep in intensity. From motherhood to slavery to contemplation each poem sucks the reader in and deserves to be savored. Tracey K. Smith is master of contemplation and care and this slim volume of poetry conveys deep meanings. Fans of poetry will eat this up and those new to prose will find themselves in love with the written word anew.
    • 4/5
      This collection of poems was very approachable, the sections were easily understandable, and all would make for great discussion.
    • 5/5
      This is the best book yet from our poet laureate [[Tracy K. Smith]], even better than her Pulitzer Prize-winning [Life on Mars]. Trumpsters will want to avoid it, as she burns the pages with tales of racism and dismay with the current regime. The worst in us having taken over And broken the rest utterly down.(From "An Old Story).They plundered her youth, then moved on.These awful, awful men. The onesWhose wealth is a kind of filth.(From "The World is Your Beautiful Younger Sister"). Her amazing "Angels" poem, with two "grizzled" angels in "leather biker gear", is one you're going to want to read.. This book also features a number of found poems based on heavily researched letters and other documents from African-American Civil War soldiers and their families (complete with original spellings).From, "I Will Tell You the Truth About This":Mr abarham linconI wont to know sir if you pleasewhether I can have my son relestfrom the arme he is all the subportI have now his father is Deadand his brother that wase allthe help I had he has been wondedtwise he has not had nothing to send me yetnow I am old and my head is blossamingfor the grave and if you do I hopethe lord will bless you and metha say that you will simpethisewith the poor he be long to theeight rigmat colard troopshe is a sarjentmart welcom is his nameSome poems are wonders from her childhood, including this one, "Urban Youth", that ends with her learning to ride a bike:But it was you and Dad and Mike teaching me to ride,Running along beside until you didn't have to hold on.Who was afraid? The hedge thrummed with beesThat only sang. Every happy thing I've known,You held, or ran alongside not having to hold.****This is a beautifully composed book; I loved it.