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.
If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.
I adore art...when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear.
I try to read a lot and listen to a lot of good songwriters, and I try to actually work on the craft of writing a song rather than just leaving it up to inspiration.
I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement - it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original.
The starting point of a picture for any painter is a matter of colors and form...I believe that the poetry of art - if that is what one may call it - is a matter of animating these forms and colors.
I want to be able to follow the example of those extraordinary British actresses who move effortlessly from film to TV to theatre roles.
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