Tracy K. Smith on God, Poetry, and Parenting in New York City

In part one of their conversation, the poet Tracy K. Smith talks with Paul Holdengraber about God, death, parenthood, and loving children the way we love books.

Tracy K. Smith on identity…
I think about the difference between [you and] the person that you become when you’re writing. In my mind, it’s kind of like my better self. It’s the patient, rigorous self that’s willing to be vulnerable, to take risks, to try. And especially, if I’m thinking in terms of poetry, to try to get to a place that feels almost impossible—philosophical, and something that has to do with the best part of us as humans. And I know the person that I am coming out of the room. This and that self linger, mix, and mingle with the mom who says We’re late, we gotta go, and the person who is sometimes impatient. It’s a really strange dichotomy. I can’t be the best, realistic version of myself if I don’t have the opportunity to go into the room and strive for this other plane. But it’s hard to live there. Sometimes I feel like I’d be a better parent if I could be as patient and resourceful playing on the floor as I can be sitting at my desk trying to figure out how I can write a sentence… There are so many rooms within a self. So many versions of our real selves.

Tracy K. Smith on books as friends…
I think it’s common for a lot of writers, that sense of Oh, I had time to be by myself and think and read and eventually you take those first steps in language. That feeling of being accompanied is really what you feel when you sort of surrender to a new book or a new poem. That there’s someone who is this companionable guide who is with you as you experience something that they lived as well. Maybe those are the feelings that predispose us to realizing that language is more than just transmitting ideas, but it’s creating a sense of possibility or a sense of… a way to listen.

Tracy K. Smith on parenting…
If we talk about the anxiety of overdrive parenting, especially in places like New York City, it sounds like so much of it has to do with ego. What school your child is going to has to do with what you’re able to make happen for them, and really it’s a reflection for you, in the smallest part of the self. I know it means a lot of other things. But those conversations about real estate and school so often come down to what the ego needs to believe about itself. And then we think about what happens when we listen the way we do as readers. Something egoless happens. You realize the truths that you live are secondary to this other thing that feels real even though it’s not. I wonder if the best thing that we can do as parents is really submit to our children in the way that we submit to the books that we love. Just allow ourselves to be led. To hear and receive something that we couldn’t have come up with on our own.

Tracy K. Smith on God and faith…
I had this huge curiousity as to why faith was so important to [my mother]. God was a presence in her life and our life because she instilled that, and I feel like what’s helped me to come to understand a little bit more about her was thinking about my own feelings being a parent. This feeling of being utterly beholden to this young being who means more to you than you mean. And also feeling so helpless. The world is so big, how can I possibly protect this person from everything. I can imagine that God became a kind of help for her. I felt when my daughter was born that God became realer. I found myself praying in ways that I hadn’t for years.

Featured photo by Marlene Lillian.