Quickie Interview # 15: Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith was raised in Northern California. She received degrees in English and Creative Writing from Harvard College and Columbia University. Her book, The Body's Question, was awarded the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize by Kevin Young and published in 2003 by Graywolf Press. Her second book, Duende (Graywolf 2007), won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. She is the recipient of a 2004 Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, a fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, a grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a 2005 Whiting Writers' Award. Her poems have appeared in Boulevard, Callaloo, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Gulf Coast, Post Road, West Branch, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She teaches in Creative Writing at Princeton University.

First Car?

I currently live in New York, where I find it easier not to drive a car, but I have fond memories of the hand-me-down cars I drove around California when I was still living in the Bay Area. The first was a 1980 Toyota Celica, in a shimmery bronze, that my sister gave me in 1994. In 1997, I got my brother’s red Toyota pickup truck, with standard gears and no power steering, and I loved how rugged—or maybe the word is “butch”—it felt. The next car was a Chevrolet Celebrity, another hanger-on from the 80s, that I drove across the country and gratefully relinquished when I discovered how expensive parking violations are in New York. I think my next vehicle will be 2-wheels and 125cc.

What was your favorite book and band in high school?

I’ll just put it out there: these high school questions are going to be tough. I used to ask my older sister very particular questions about her childhood, and she’d preface her answers with a statement like: “Tracy, that was 30 years ago.” I feel a little like that now. So much has happened since I was at that stage. But okay: I remembered liking Jude the Obscure and Of Human Bondage and Cyrano de Bergerac at some point in high school. I was also very inspired by a book by Brenda Ueland called If You Want to Write, which my drama teacher recommended to me when I was a junior or senior. And the music I listened to varied from Edie Brickell and Madonna to Stevie Wonder and Sly and the Family Stone.

Which crowd did you hang out with in high school?

I was one of the kids in the AP classes. Some of my classmates had been friends since primary school, and I’ve maintained intermittent touch with one or two over the years, but I know very little about who it is that each one became. I’d love to say we were cool nerds, but when I think back to myself, it was always a matter of feeling either extremely cool or extremely nerdy. This is a pendulum that still swings back and forth in my mind.

First job?

I worked as a temp at Apple Computer in Cupertino California in 1990, the summer before leaving for college. I think I was helping to administer an early email program for employees of the company, but what I mostly remember was meeting up with my brother for lunch, or going to a nearby park to read for an hour or so at midday.

What's new on your iPod or CD player?

Amy Winehouse, Bebel Gilberto remixes, ABBA, 2Pac and Snoop Dogg (I’m just now getting into west coast hip hop). I just got Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall (which I’ve always loved) and Madonna’s last few cds (which I’ve always been too much of a snob to listen to) from a friend’s computer. And Frank Zappa and David Bowie are always in heavy rotation.

What's the best DVD you've rented of late?

I just watched Little Miss Sunshine in a hotel in India and completely flipped for Alan Arkin’s character. He reminded me somewhat of Gene Hackman’s character in The Royal Tennenbaums. Where are all of those old men?

What are you working on these days?

I’m just getting into the first new poems after the completion of my second book. I don’t know what will characterize them yet, but they’re pulling me towards different forms and postures. Some of them are even, at times, a little humorous, which feels consistent with my personality, but a trait that rarely surfaces in my work.

Anything coming out soon?

My second book, Duende, will be published by Graywolf in May. I’ve just seen the proofs and it feels exhilaratingly real to me now—like a lover I’ve finally had “the talk” with.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever gotten?

“Wisdom is a butterfly, not a gloomy bird of prey.” That’s Yeats, as quoted by Seamus Heaney, who was my teacher in college.

Is there a piece of writing advice you find yourself frequently repeating to your students at Princeton?

Stop trying to direct the poem and try to listen to where it seems to want to go. What sonic hints can you follow that might lead to exciting thematic shifts? What un-premeditated choices can you allow yourself to make that might teach you something about the role of improvisation in the process of writing?

What are some of your guilty pleasures?

Well, my list of music reveals a thing or two about that. What else? I can’t sing to save my life, but sometimes I’m a fool for karaoke. I love to dance, though who should feel guilty about that?!! Certain friends in my life have been asked to refer to me in the third person, as “Big Guns.”

Favorite recipe?

Homemade whole wheat bread.

Can you describe your workspace? What's on your desk?

I have a floor-through apartment in a Brooklyn brownstone. The middle room serves as my study, with a large oak table where everything that needs attending to in the present moment sits. My computer is front and center.

What’s the most interesting place you’ve ever been?

I’m writing right now from a beach in Goa, India, which is relaxing and joyful and fascinating for the warmth and still-discernible traces of the Portuguese presence. I was in Delhi earlier this month, as well as during the summer, which is wonderfully frenetic and chaotic and cosmopolitan and alive. But how can I say this is the most interesting place when I’ve been changed by so many other landscapes and people? I love the feeling of difference that most places exert, and the longing and curiosity that precedes my arrival there.

Stones or Beatles?

Stones. Period.