Quotes By Tracy K. Smith

Brooklyn is kind of my writer's retreat.

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.

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

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.

I feel like it's a gift for any writer to be recognized like this.