Tracy K Smith

"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet: a stunning meditation on ritual and collectiveness that explores how older forms of inquiry-- from song to prayer to ways of public gathering-- might help us all survive violent times and address America's shared history"--

In Wade in the Water, Tracy K. Smith boldly ties America's contemporary moment both to our nation's fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith's signature voice – inquisitive, lyrical, and wry – turns over what it means to be...

"Yi Lei published her poem 'A Single Woman's Bedroom' in 1987, when cohabitation before marriage was a punishable crime in China. She was met with major critical acclaim--and with outrage--for her frank embrace of women's erotic desire and her unabashed critique of oppressive law. Over the span of her revolutionary career, Yi Lei became one of the most influential figures in contemporary Chinese poetry." -- Goodreads.com

This anthology explores and celebrates the United States and the lives of those who live there. American Journal presents fifty contemporary poems that explore and celebrate our country and our lives. Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith has gathered a remarkable chorus of voices that ring up and down the registers of American poetry. In the elegant arrangement of this anthology, we hear stories from rural communities...