Tracy K. Smith

Today I was listening to NPR and Tracy K. Smith just won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. She read several poems and I, who does not typically read poetry, was transfixed after hearing her work. Smith is based out of Brooklyn and teaches creative writing at Princeton. She says that when writing a poem, she tries to find a topic that she doesn't know too much about and tell a story through another person's eyes. This "persona poetry" is becoming very popular, Smith says. NPR is even having a contest for it. The following is a poem from her winning book Life on Mars: (I love "Is God being or pure force? The wind/ Or what commands it?)


Is our universe “a house party,”, or a “primal scream,” as another would have it? “Is God being or pure force? The wind / Or what commands it?” Or might there be more than one God? “Maybe there is a pair of them, and they sit / Watching the cream disperse into their coffee // Like the A-bomb. This equals that, one says, / Arranging a swarm of coordinates // On a giant grid. They exchange smiles. / It’s so simple, they’ll be done by lunchtime.”