Poet Laureate Tracy Smith narrates her 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of poetry, exploring reality and imagination in an expansive universe. She fills the space with purposeful pauses and slow, steady monotones that blend the metaphorical and the actual. There is not much fluctuation in her soft tone, which tends to evoke the feeling that everything is okay, although that isn't necessarily the case. Her pronunciation is sharp and clear. And she chooses to elongate certain words, conveying a yearning. She is a storyteller, especially when she talks about her father, a scientist. There is a sort of humble gratitude being offered to her father, who was an engineer who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
It’s the very first week of National Poetry Month and we know you might be wondering — how should you celebrate? What collections should you be reading? Who should you be reading? As always, we’ve got you covered. Our Poured Over podcast has welcomed myriad poets to talk about everything from collections of verse to […]
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith’s To Free the Captives combines the beauty of a memoir with a grander look at America’s history and future. Smith joins us to talk about family and cultural identity, race and belonging, the importance of poetry and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over. This episode of Poured Over […]
The Pulitzer Prize winner on discovering books, calling out to her past and future, and finding a place of her own between science and faith in her lyrical new memoir. A conversation with Casey Rocheteau.
Domenica Ruta, author of the critically-acclaimed memoir With or Without You (Spring ’13) discusses the books that inspired her as a child (though she wanted to be a figure skater/surgeon, not a writer, at the time), the differences between writing fiction and memoir, and “the alchemy of art ” with Discover Great New Writers.