You want a poem to unsettle something. There's a deep and interesting kind of troubling that poems do, which is to say, 'This is what you think you're certain of, and I'm going to show you how that's not enough. There's something more that might be even more rewarding if you're willing to let go of what you already know.'
Interpretation
Poetry challenges our perceptions and encourages us to embrace the unknown.
In this quote, Tracy K. Smith highlights the transformative power of poetry to challenge our beliefs and assumptions. She suggests that a good poem creates a discomfort that prompts us to reconsider what we think we know, ultimately leading us to discover deeper, more rewarding truths if we are open to letting go of our current understanding.
In practice
In a poetry workshop, you might share this quote to encourage participants to explore beyond their comfort zones.
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 know what to play, play nothing.
The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting. _x000D_ On the best days, all three.
Not only must you be an artist, must you be generous, and must you be able to see where you can help but you must also be aware. Aware of where your skills are welcomed.
All my works are games, serious game.
Grant that the true organ with which the beautiful is apprehended is the imagination, and it follows that all arts are likely to affect the feelings indirectly.
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