Tracy K. Smith
Poetry from the On Being Gathering
A long weekend framed by poetry, anchored in live On Being conversations, with generous unscheduled replenishing space — a convening of the generative narrative of our time — at the 1440 Multiversity in the redwoods of Scotts Valley, California.
Image by Bethany Birnie, © All Rights Reserved.
Guest
Tracy K. Smith is a professor of creative writing at Princeton University and the former Poet Laureate of the United States. Her poetry collections include Life on Mars, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Duende, and Wade in the Water. Her memoir is Ordinary Light. She’s the co-editor of the book, There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis.
Transcript
Note: During our opening morning, Tracy K. Smith graciously shared two poems that have not yet been published so we can’t provide a transcript of them at this time. We are pleased to share her third and final poem, “Panoramic,” which first appeared in The Harvard Advocate.
[applause]
Tracy K. Smith: I’ll close with a poem that, to be really honest, was written months ago for the inauguration of President Claudine Gay at Harvard University, where I teach. And so, it’s a poem of hope and also challenge, because we want our leaders to lead us toward the light. I offer it today because we are ever more deeply, I now understand, in need of reaffirming that intention. And maybe I share it as a way of saying let’s take this burden together, but it’s also a gift to be able to participate in building or rebuilding. It’s a poem written in a few sections. It’s a poem that revises itself, as we must do in all work. And it’s called “Panoramic.”
PANORAMIC
I.
If we’re lucky, it’ll go on, this
Poem we’re writing together,
Like a winding mountain pass,
A place to journey through on the way
to where we hope to get to.
That we’re writing it together
Doesn’t make it the same
For me as for you. My lines
Zag and ripple back: rain
On water in wind. Yours
Are cloudless, telegraphic:
Songbirds busy with morning’s
Matter. Can we trust us
To follow that future music
Past the edge of familiar
Woods? This tune for what
We’ve never yet thought
To sing or say to anyone?
Can we ferry hope?
Can we outpace fright?
That we write it together
Doesn’t guarantee what it will
Mean to you, to me. Begun,
It hurries ahead. We scurry
To help it along to where
We say we hope to get to.
II.
Do you—
Can you see it?
At the horizon seam
Of undifferentiated sea?
What we are just now
Fathoming into being?
Shadows surge beneath
A roof of waves.
Sunlight tilts and pools
Above. The nothing
That isn’t possible
Flares in the mind
Of a school
of squid, becoming
The everything
That is.
III.
If we’re lucky, it’ll go on, this poem
We’re writing together—a place
To journey through on the way
to where we hope to get to—
Strike lucky, insert: brave.
Strike hope, insert: need.
Strike together, insert:
There is no difference between
What waits for you and
What ’s coming for me. Strike
Place, insert: where I am
no longer afraid. Strike hope,
Insert: remember. Insert:
What has been frightened
Into hiding, scrolled up,
Buried deep. Strike
Where we say we hope to get to.
Insert whatever in your mouth
Means: Everyone, Every One,
Every ever-once-was-one,
Insert: Where everyone is free.
Smith: Thank you.
[applause]
Reflections