[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and to end the show for the first three days of the drive, we're bringing you some of the best poetry of the past year with Tracy K Smith, a Pulitzer Prize writer, and a prize-winning writer, I should say, and former US Poet Laureate. She's the editor of the anthology, The Best American Poetry 2021. Maybe you've seen past year's versions in your local bookstore, and we'll get to hear a couple of more from this year's volume.

Tracy also has a new book of her own work called Such Color: New and Selected Poems, and we'll hear some of those. Hi, Tracy. Yesterday was great, thanks for doing this again.

Tracy K Smith: Thanks for having me back.

Brian Lehrer: To start today, let's hear another selection from The Best American Poetry of 2021 that you picked out. I see it's Wheelchair by Yusef Komunyakaa, a poet who's been writing for the better part of five decades. Want to set this up?

Tracy K Smith: Absolutely. Sure. I'll just say that this is a poem about health and strengths or failing health, and also the sources we turn to for determination and strength. In this case, ancestry. Wheelchair.

Weeks on my back, counting stars

not up there cutting quick close corners

in the wheelchair Ralph kept moving true

as oil questions silent in my mouth after hearing

a ragged sound rattle loose from other souls

as if within my own body trying not to drag

my foot and near misses in the hallway pumped

dares through blood as we rolled into the elevator

I can see my great-grandma, Sarah, as wheels of her

chair furrowed those chopped rose, feet curled under her

a rake or a hoe held in strong hands, leading corn, beans

and potatoes dug to feed her hungry family down in the Mississippi Delta

today, it is not hard to hear a moan rise out of black earth

where this woman raised hot red peppers for her turtle soup

I loved the way that this poem, which I think is like two long sentences, anchors us into two distinct but maybe also adjacent moments in time. The present and its struggle or challenge, and then memory that rises up almost like a guiding force.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, how the past is still with us. You're right that even though it's a bit of a cliché to call 2020 and 2021 a year like no other, you were floored by the upheaval last year brought with it. In what ways do you think the past year and a half have changed poets and their poetry or what you were looking for in the best poetry of 2021 collection?

Tracy K Smith: I think poets began to become resourceful in new ways in terms of naming and capturing feelings in the moment. Sometimes conflicting feelings that emerge out of the many different forms of upheaval, but there's also a really strong sense of clarity of the value of community and the desire to be of use, I think, to not just the self in a difficult time, but also to the culture.

I recognized so much imaginative work that poets are doing to try and clear a space of healing and also to galvanize us. We have a lot of work ahead and I think sometimes it's a poem that can be a heartbeat to the struggle and also the hope.

Brian Lehrer: To that end, let's go now to the poem, George Floyd by Terrance Hayes, which you've agreed to read. He's a past MacArthur genius fellow. Do you want to set this one up at all before you dive in?

Tracy K Smith: Yes. This poem really feels like a marquee poem of what, in many ways, was an adversarial year. I loved the way that it captures the blurring and the escalating that we all experienced of one moment surging into the next. You can hear that in the quick transformations from line to line in this poem. George Floyd.

You can be a bother who dyes

his hair Dennis Rodman blue

in the face of the man kneeling in blue

in the face the music of his wrist-watch

your mouth is little more

than a door being knocked

out of the ring of fire around

the afternoon came evening’s bell

of the ball and chain around the neck

of the unarmed brother ground down

to gunpowder dirt can be inhaled

like a puff the magic bullet point

of transformation both kills and fires

the life of the party like it’s 1999 bottles

of beer on the wall street people

who sleep in the streets do not sleep

without counting yourself lucky

rabbit’s foot of the mountain

lion do not sleep without

making your bed of the river

boat gambling there will be

no stormy weather on the water

bored to death any means of killing

time is on your side of the bed

of the truck transporting Emmett

Till the break of day Emmett Till

the river runs dry your face

the music of the spheres

Emmett Till the end of time

Brian Lehrer: So painful. How do you even make poetry out of the police murder of George Floyd?

Tracy K Smith: I know. This is a poem that does really difficult and chastening things with language, the way it tumbles one phrase tumbled into another, and we hear the violence that's almost hiding between familiar statements. Then there's this other thing that happens at the end of the poem, Emmett Till emerges and that presence, that abiding presence reminds us that nothing new happened in 2020. George Floyd is one of many people murdered to the violence that has marked our culture for generations. Yes, it's a heavy, heavy poem.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, it starts with George Floyd and it ends with Emmett Till. Again, the past connecting to the present, in this case, of course, so, unfortunately. You want to do a quick one from your own new collection, Such Color, before you go? I see you have a 32nd one picked out.

Tracy K Smith: I have a short one, I'll try and read it quickly. It's called Bee on a Sill.

Submit to its own weight

the bowl of itself too full too weak

or too wise to lift and go and something blunt

in me remembers the old charade about putting

a thing out of its misery for it, for me

sleep bee deep and easy

hive, peeve, give, grieve

then rise when you're ready from

your soul's hard floor to sweet work or some war

Brian Lehrer: We will let that one speak for itself and we'll have to because we're out of time, but we will hear more tomorrow from Tracy K Smith's new collection, Such Color. Tracy K Smith, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former Poet Laureate of the United States. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you again tomorrow.

Tracy K Smith: Thanks. Talk to you soon.

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.