Just three of US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith’s books are books of poetry. But the other book, a 2016 memoir entitled Ordinary Light, is the best explanation — or the most accessible anyway — of why she has her new job as the country’s top poet. Smith won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for Life on Mars (link below), but it’s her memoir — “the story of a young artist struggling to fashion her own understanding of belief, loss, history, and what it means to be black in America” — that many who are upset about the current political climate might take the most succor from.
Oprah called Ordinary Light “unflinching” while Slate nailed its essence calling the book “transcendent, lovely, languid, and painful.” Here are Smith’s other two books, each a luminous journey for the careful reader.
