I have this belief that we are so vulnerable when we open ourselves up to literature. We're reminded of these real parts of ourselves.
Interpretation
Literature exposes our vulnerabilities and connects us to our true selves.
In this quote, Tracy K. Smith emphasizes the profound impact literature has on our understanding of ourselves. By engaging with stories and characters, we allow ourselves to confront our vulnerabilities and reflect on our own experiences, ultimately fostering a deeper connection to our humanity.
In practice
In a book club discussion, someone might say, 'This quote by Tracy K. Smith perfectly captures how reading can reveal our innermost selves.'
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.
I'm fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
The central problem of novel-writing is causality.
Literature is an investment of genius which pays dividends to all subsequent times.
It really matters to writers to find and treasure readers, all the more when they're on the other side of the world.
Last Exit to Brooklyn should explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America and still be eagerly read in a hundred years.
I still believe nonfiction is the most important literature to come out of the second half of the 20th century.
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