'That very direct magical way of a poem'

 “I first got caught up in this marvelous feeling of being spoken to in that very direct, private, magical way by a poem when I was really young.  I was in grade school and had found an Emily Dickinson poem in a textbook.” – Tracy K. Smith 

The 22^nd Poet Laureate of the U.S., Smith was born on April 16, 1972 in Massachusetts.  Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, her collections of poetry have been published worldwide and won numerous other prizes.  Smith received her B.A. from Harvard, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and was a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford.  Since 2019, she has been Chair of Princeton's Lewis Center for the Arts.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Smith’s,

 

          The Good Life

When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread,
Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water
From a village without a well, then living
One or two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine.

 

 

 

 

Share A Writer’s Moment with friends

Writersmoment.blogspot.com/