Tracy K. Smith Quotes

When I became poet laureate, I was in a slightly uncomfortable position because I think a lot of poetry isn't worth reading.

'Dead Poets Society' was a very influential film on me and so talking about that movie with him, he just inspired me to continue writing poetry and we talked a lot about our favourite poets. My wrap present from Robin was a beautiful limited edition copy of Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' and that's a great memory for me.

The thing is, I've been writing for a long time now, trying to be a poet for the last 40 years, and it's still very difficult not to second-guess myself when reading my own work.

I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.

To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential.

After you kind of find your footing, sonnets are what comes easiest.

I was always a huge fan of E. E. Cummings. He did a series of lectures at Harvard or Princeton, and they were recorded. And they were incredibly moving.

There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library.

Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.

My father read poetry to me, encouraged me to memorize poems. But the writing of it was quite a different thing.

I was 15 when I first became deeply touched by the rhythm and structure of words.

By the age of nine, I had a thorough knowledge of contemporary Polish literature as well as of foreign literature in Polish translation, and I began to write poems in honour of a lady of thirty years. Naturally, she knew nothing about them.

The nations that are achieving something have no taste for poetry

What I wrote all the time when I was a kid - I don't want to call it 'poetry,' because it wasn't poetry. I was not that kind of a writer. I was a rhymer. I was a fan of Dorothy Parker's, so maybe I wrote poetry to that extent, but my main focus was the humor of it, and word construction, and the slant. Your words, it's a very powerful experience.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

I am a patriot, but I must say that English poetry is the richest in the world.

People who can't speak Russian will be less susceptible to Russian propaganda. But they will also be less susceptible to the poetry of Joseph Brodsky.

I do believe that we've a responsibility to try to acknowledge the range, both geographic and graphic, of what's happening in poetry in English. I'm interested in poems that are first-rate. After that, I'm not too concerned if they come from Queens or Queensland.

I've liked Pete Gurney's writing always.

I had it in my head when I was in college that I wanted to be a writer, but it took me a long time to commit to being a writer. Up until then, I had worked one dead-end job after another while writing on the side.

I'll read anything Anne Carson writes, anything J. M. Coetzee writes, and anything Cormac McCarthy writes. I'll drop whatever I'm doing to read a new Mary Ruefle essay.

I'm a huge fan of Toni Morrison. I just think she's so incredible. And also Nayyirah Waheed, who's a poet.

When I write a poem, I do not have to worry about using a higher Urdu vocabulary because I know the reader knows Urdu well.

Lyrics are really, really hard, I think, or at least they're really hard for me. Some people can channel lyrics faster. I find them very hard to find, so because of it, they take me a long time, and I really think about them.

I think the first time I tried to write a romantic song, it was just horrendously embarrassing. I remember thinking, 'Okay, I'm not going to do that anymore.' I think that sort of embarrassed me for the next 10 years.