Tracy K. Smith quotes:

I grew up in northern California in a town called Fairfield, which is kind of exactly between San Francisco and Sacramento, a small suburb. And I'm the youngest of five children.

So much of my poetry begins with something that I can describe in visual terms, so thinking about distance, thinking about how life begins and what might be watching us.

If I call it pain, and try to touch it With my hands, my own life, It lies still and the music thins, A pulse felt for through garments.

[...] the body is what we lean toward,tensing as it darts, dancing away.but it's the voice that enters us. evensaying nothing. even saying nothingover and over absently to itself

from time to time, i think of him watching mefrom over the top of his glasses, or eating candyfrom a jar. i remember thanking him each timethe session was done. but mostly what i seeis a human hand reaching down to lifta pebble from my tongue

Brooklyn is kind of my writer's retreat.

Everything that disappears/Disappears as if returning somewhere

For me, a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit.

History, with its hard spine & dog-eared Corners, will be replaced with nuance, Just like the dinosaurs gave way To mounds and mounds of ice.

Lizzie Harris's debut collection, Stop Wanting, crafts images and lines of such arresting splendor that I am very often driven to joy at the feats of beauty and healing that language is capable of bringing into being.

We are here for what amounts to a few/hours,/a day at most./We feel around making sense of the terrain,/our own new limbs,/Bumping up against a herd of bodies/until one becomes home./Moments sweep past. The grass bends/then learns again to stand.

time never stops, but does it end? and how many livesbefore take-off, before we find ourselves beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?

Look, I want to say,The worst thing you can imagine has alreadyZipped up its coat and is heading backUp the road to wherever it came from.

I've been beating my head all day long on the same six lines,

Keetje Kuipers' poems are daring, formally beautiful and driven by rich imagery and startling ideas.

Often it is a moment rather than an event that makes a poem.

Once I started writing all the time and interacting with poets, I made a conscious decision to identify myself as a poet. It's funny how much a single word can provide focus and direction. As soon as I claimed that identity, I started clearing more and more space for poetry in my life and applying poetic tools to other areas of my life. The world became a different place, and I witnessed it through different kinds of eyes.

When I was young, my father was lord Of a small kingdom: a wife, a garden, Kids for whom his word was Word. It took years for my view to harden, To shrink him to human size.