Ep. 9: “Declaration” by Tracy K. Smith Transcript: Hello, and welcome to Poetry Soup! I’m your host, Emma Catherine Hoff. Today, I’ll be reading and talking about the poem, “Declaration” by Tracy K. Smith. Tracy K. Smith was born on April 16, 1972 in Falmouth, Massachusetts. She was largely inspired to begin writing poetry by the works of Emily Dickinson. Smith attended both Harvard (where she got her Bachelor’s Degree) and Columbia University (where she got her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing). Much of her poetry follows the theme of slavery and early American history. For instance, many of the poems in her collection, “Wade in the Water,” are drawn from historical documents and letters by former slaves. One example of a poem like this is “Declaration.” Tracy K. Smith was United States poet laureate from 2017 to 2019, preceded by Juan Felipe Herrera and followed by Joy Harjo. Smith has published four books of poetry and a memoir titled, “Ordinary Light,” in which she says that she was inspired by Elizabeth Bishop and other poets. Her book of poetry, “Life on Mars,” which I greatly enjoy, is dedicated to her father and his life. He has sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people He has plundered our— ravaged our— destroyed the lives of our— taking away our— abolishing our most valuable— and altering fundamentally the Forms of our— In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. —taken Captive on the high Seas to bear— All of the lines in this poem are drawn in order directly from the Declaration of Independence, hence the title of the poem, “Declaration.” The Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” However, when these lines were written, millions of Black people were enslaved. It was simply ridiculous for the writers of the Declaration, many of them slave owners themselves, to say that they believed men were created equal when they did absolutely nothing to stop the mistreatment of African Americans. So, what Smith does is that she cuts certain sentences off and picks just the right parts of the document to make it a Declaration of Independence for Black people today. The poem begins with what is perhaps the most important word, “he.” In the Declaration of Independence, “he” refers to the King of England, but here Smith makes that “he” refer to the capitalist system and white supremacy. The line, “he has sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people” could indicate the BLM movement and how hundreds of Black people are killed by the police every year in the US. Smith also makes connections between the tyranny of England’s rule during the time that the Declaration of Independence was written and the struggle against racism. When the poem says, “In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms…” it could refer to the Civil Rights Movement, to peaceful protests, to the many marches and speeches against racism. “Taken captive on the high seas to bear —” could be talking about the slave trade and slave ships. In a way, “Declaration” makes fun of the Declaration of Independence. “Declaration” makes use of short lines, many of which are cut off before the sentence ends. Many of these sentences can be finished by the reader — for example, “he has destroyed the lives of our —” could be “he has destroyed the lives of our people.” Of course, what’s interesting about using line breaks this way is that there are multiple words to end this phrase besides “people.” The last lines, “taken captive on the high seas to bear —” can also be finished. From the very beginning, slaves were brought to the United States and to many other countries to bear years of oppression. Years of mistreatment. Years of unfairness. Years of having their rights taken from them. And years of torture. This is a cool technique to use if you want to write a poem, because it allows the reader to imagine what the author means. So it’s almost like the poet writes half of the poem, but the reader writes the other, not only interpreting what the poem as a whole means, but also finishing the sentences. This is a style that I find really interesting. Maybe “Declaration” will inspire you to speak out about issues you care about. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Poetry Soup, and I’ll see you soon with the next one!
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Poetry Soup Ep. 8 – “On Not Mowing the Lawn” by Mary Oliver
Ep. 8: “On Not Mowing the Lawn” by Mary Oliver Transcript: Hello, and welcome to Poetry Soup! I’m your host, Emma Catherine Hoff. Today, I’ll be reading and talking about a poem by the great poet Mary Oliver, titled, “On Not Mowing the Lawn.” Mary Oliver was born on September 10, 1935, in Maple Heights, Ohio. Much of her poetry, including “On Not Mowing the Lawn,” describes her relationship with nature. She had felt a strong connection to nature from a young age. She had a hard childhood and escaped into writing for relief from it. Oliver went to both Ohio State University and Vassar College, but did not get a degree from either place. She published many books, including “Blue Horses,” published in 2014, in which the poem, “On Not Mowing the Lawn,” appears. She won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Oliver said that some of her favorite poets (among others) were Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Actually, there is a reference to Walt Whitman in “On Not Mowing the Lawn.” Oliver does what many poets do, but in her own way. She pays attention to details. For Oliver, these details are usually found in the natural world — in the looks of animals, the tastes of berries, and flowers blooming. Oliver takes a similar approach in the poem I’ll read today. Let the grass spring up tall, let its roots sing and the seeds begin their scattering. Let the weeds rejoin and be prolific throughout. Let the noise of the mower be banished, hurrah! Let the path become where I choose to walk, and not otherwise established. Let the goldfinches be furnished their humble dinner. Let the sparrows determine their homes in security. Let the honeysuckle reach as high as my window, that it may look in. Let the mice fill the barns and bins with a sufficiency. Let anything created, that wants to creep or leap forward, be able to do so. Let the grasshopper have gliding space. Let the noise of the mower be banished, yes, yes. Let the katydid return and announce himself in the long evenings. Let the blades of grass surge back from the last cutting. Or, if you want to be poetic: the leaves of grass. If you try to find “On Not Mowing the Lawn” on the internet, or at least the version that I just read, you won’t be able to. So many of Oliver’s poems have grass and lawns and nature involved in them that you can keep scrolling and never find the poem you were looking for. But that, in a way, is what books are made for. To be held, and for their pages to be turned, and for their satisfying smell to be sucked in through your nostrils. Books give people thrills, no matter what author, genre, or subject. For Oliver, nature does this too. She expresses some of this in not mowing the lawn, practically singing about grass and its wonders — “let the grass spring up tall, let its roots sing/and the seeds begin their scattering.” At the same time, the poem is also an excuse in verse, or simply a way to procrastinate such a tedious chore as mowing the lawn. The poem is at once an ode to letting nature run its course, to letting plants and animals live without human interference, but it is also an extremely detailed and therefore “intellectual” way of getting out of something she doesn’t want to do. It is a way to make more time for her to simply lie on the grass, admiring it and writing more poems about it for people to enjoy. “On Not Mowing the Lawn,” exaggerates the concept of allowing all living things to have free will. She describes mice scurrying around in barns uninterrupted, grasshoppers clearing space for themselves, and katydids coming to sing as loudly as they want. Oliver writes, “let anything created, that wants to creep or leap forward, be able to do so.” She speaks of banishing the lawn mower as a way to do this, as a way to let nature become wild, as it truly should be. “On Not Mowing the Lawn,” is a poem full of imagery, allowing you to see everything that Oliver describes and to place yourself in that peaceful circle of nature. Something I found interesting in this poem was the last line. Oliver writes, “Or, if you want to be poetic: the leaves of grass.” As I said earlier, one of Oliver’s favorite poets was Walt Whitman, and “leaves of grass” is the title of his one and only collection of poems. In a way, this line is a homage to Whitman. This part of Oliver’s poem is funny, because, even though “On Not Mowing the Lawn” is a poem, she says, “if you want to be poetic.” This also makes me think about ideas or words that are “poetic,” versus ideas and words that aren’t. Really, there is no such thing. Oliver happens to use simple words and images in her poetry, and other poets might not, but if a poem is good, it will convey a powerful idea in a way that leaves you feeling something. “On Not Mowing the Lawn,” is a poem that offers insight on both nature and letting it run wild and also on how to get out of doing a chore. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Poetry Soup, and I’ll see you with the next one!
Poetry Soup Ep. 7 – “Folk Song” by Tomaž Šalamun
Ep. 7: “Folk Song” by Tomaž Šalamun Transcript: Hello, and welcome to Poetry Soup! I’m your host, Emma Catherine Hoff. Today, I’ll be reading “Folk Song,” a short poem by the great Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun. Tomaž Šalamun was born on July 4, 1941, in Zagreb, Croatia. He was married to the writer and journalist Marusa Krese, and then to the painter Metka Krasovec. He wrote thirty-nine books of poetry during his lifetime, nine of which were translated into English. Two of these books are, “The Collected Poems of Tomaž Šalamun” and “Woods and Chalices.” He won the European Prize for Poetry and the Pushcart Prize, among other awards. He had two children, Ana Šalamun and David Šalamun. Tomaž Šalamun was greatly influenced by the American poets Walt Whitman, Frank O’Hara, and John Ashbery, and their styles come across in his work. Tomaž Šalamun’s poem, “My First Time in New York City,” for instance, reflects the sensibility and cool fascination with New York City as so much of Frank O’Hara’s work, and his poem “History” is similar to Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” in the way that it talks about himself, saying things like, “Tomaž Šalamun is a sphere rushing through the air.” Salamun died on December 27, 2014, in Ljubljana, Slovenia at the age of 73. Most of Šalamun’s poems are short and focus on memory, experience, or poetry itself. The poem I’ll be reading today, “Folk Song,” is only eight lines. Still, there’s a lot to talk about! Many of Tomaž Šalamun’s poems have a sort of stream-of-consciousness feel or they include lots of details about many things that Šalamun sees. However, his shortest poems are often centered around just one topic, packing so much meaning into very few lines. An example of this is “Folk Song.” This poem is part of a book by Tomaž Šalamun called, “The Four Questions of Melancholy,” which was originally published in 1997. The poem was translated by Charles Simic, also an amazing poet, who died recently on January 9th. Now I’m going to read “Folk Song,” a short and beautiful poem. Every true poet is a monster. He destroys people and their speech. His singing elevates a technique that wipes out the earth so we are not eaten by worms. The drunk sells his coat. The thief sells his mother. Only the poet sells his soul to separate it from the body that he loves. In the beginning of this poem, Tomaž Šalamun writes, “Every true poet is a monster.” He goes on to explain this in the next lines. Poets are monsters because they destroy things and put them back together in a way that makes them completely different. They build new worlds after they forget about the one they live in. A poet’s “singing” is their poetry, and it reshapes the earth — however, first our own currentworld must be metaphorically obliterated. However, the poem also shows why the poet does this. As he says, the poet does this “so we are not eaten by worms.” In other words, poetry provides us with something eternal, something that can live on after we die — maybe even provide a way to continue existing after we’ve been buried in the ground. A part of you that is shared with everybody, and until people forget the poem, you are not completely gone. But this is not just the case with the poet themselves. Poetry is for everyone, and everyone is a part of it. This is the reason for the poem being titled, “Folk Song.” A folk song is a traditional song that is often from a particular culture. Tomaž Šalamun refers to poetry as “singing” in his poem already, which makes a connection between the title and the poem. Poetry is passed on and it is known to everyone, like a folk song. And in this sense it helps.us to survive. This poem is, in a way, in two parts. Though the entire poem is one stanza, the last four lines share the riddle quality of the first four, but they also seem more straight-forward. They are clear statements, meant to support the original claim made in the beginning of the poem. Out of all four of the last lines, the last two are the most interesting — “only the poet sells his soul to separate it from the body that he loves.” Again, the poem refers to poetry being something that is separate from the body, something greater than mortality. And so poetry makes us immortal, almost. It allows us to part from our physical self. But still, as much as we want to live forever, in every way possible, to live in art, we also yearn for our body. So, poetry is a problem in prompting the poet to leave their body behind, but it is also a solution, allowing people’s histories and legacies to live on. “Folk Song” is a short and sweet poem by Tomaž Šalamun about what poetry really is. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Poetry Soup, and I’ll see you with the next one!
