The Link Between Writing and Listening with Tracy K. Smith

At Time, Tracy K. Smith discusses her newest poetry collection, Such Color, whose poems allowed her to face this past year and a half with a sense of peace. “Lately, it feels like, is a future even possible?” Smith asks. “That’s the question, but all of those things—joy, humor, and the hope that a future might be possible—have long existed to sustain communities of people who are imperiled in some way. Not as an escape, but as a way of saying, you and your body and your story, matter. That you are vital, necessary, and you are loved in some way. And that’s a way of keeping going.”