“I want to just go to places where writers don't usually go, where peop...” — Tracy K. Smith Quote

“I want to just go to places where writers don't usually go, where people like me don't usually show up, and say, 'Here are some poems. Do they speak to you? What do you hear in them?'”

“I love the sense of looking at the sad, paltry, and yet very familiar spectacle that we must make from moment to moment in our lives, and in our frenzy, as something that's as out there as alien life.”

“I think the way poems are taught to high school students is completely counterintuitive; it sets up this sense of being the poem's adversary. The poem is sort of sneakily trying to outsmart you.”

“I go to a lot of writers conferences and literary festivals that tend to be in college towns or cities, and I'm eager to see what happens if those same texts and those same questions move outside of those areas to smaller rural communities where there are surely people who read and love poetry.”

“One of poetry's great effects, through its emphasis upon feeling, association, music, and image - things we recognize and respond to even before we understand why - is to guide us toward the part of ourselves so deeply buried that it borders upon the collective.”

“Often, I hear my ideas are more incomprehensible than not.”

“Sometimes I'd hear things on other people's records and I say I wanted it on my records, but Leslie Kong said, no, it wasn't right and that it wasn't my style.”

“If you only hear one side of the story, at some point, you have to question who the writer is.”

“I think when people hear my book on Audible, they'll hear the inflection in my voice, the tone, and understand me a little bit better and understand my family a little bit better in the ways that I tell the stories. Some are told with laughter, and some are told with sadness.”

“I listened to my record and hear lots of influences. And it's very rich... it's got a wide spectrum.”

“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”