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 a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a cu...

Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot PrizeFinalist for the Forward Prize for Best CollectionThe extraordinary new poetry collection by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United StatesEven the men in black armor, the onesJangling handcuffs and keys, what elseAre they so buffered against, if not love’s bladeSizing up the heart’s familiar meat?We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat.

A Pulitzer Prize–winning poet reveals how poetry is a powerful tool of connection and understanding in a fractured world.Drawing on deep passion and personal experience, former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith demystifies the art form that has too often been mischaracterized as “inaccessible,” “irrelevant,” or “intimidating.” She argues that poetry is rooted in fundamentally human qualities innate to our capacities to love, dream, question, and cultivate community. ...

The Body's Question by Tracy K. Smith received the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African-American poet, selected by Kevin Young. Confronting loss, historical intersections with race and family, and the threshold between childhood and adulthood, Smith gathers courage and direction from the many disparate selves encountered in these poems, until, as she writes, "I was anyone I wanted to be."

Ever considered living the life as an expatriate? Do you like traveling? Do you want a quick, easy read while en route? And do you have a sense of humor? This book is for you!

The Spring 2020 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and remains prescient in the digital age by providing readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares “the Triton among minnows.”As guest-editor Tracy K. Smith writes in her introduction, “I know the most urgent wo...

Winner of the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry PrizeThe poems in Sister Tongue explore negative spaces—the distance between twin sisters, between lovers, between Farsi and English, between the poet's upbringing in California and her family in Iran. This space between vibrates with loss and longing, arcing with tension. Farnaz Fatemi's poetry delves into the intricacies of the relational space between people, the depth of ancestral roots, and the visceral memo...

**The first volume in an anthology series that amplifies the voices of unsung Black poets to paint a more robust picture of our national past, and of the Black literary imagination, with a foreword by Tracy K. SmithA Penguin Classic**Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy repeatedly found themselves struck by the number of exciting poets they came across in long-out-of-print collections and forgotten journals whose work has been neglected or entirely ignored, even by scholars of...

"This book brings revelation on relationships when it comes to repeating the same type of relationship over and over - while precious time is being stolen. There is an enemy that sends familiar spirits to distract us from having a right relationship with God. The moment you come out of one relationship to focus on you - another one appears - only in a different package (body). Within about 3 months or so it becomes obvious (again) that they have the same characteristics or patterns experie...

LeBron James is a standout forward in the NBA. Learn about his childhood and his rise to becoming a basketball superstar.

An interfaith collection of prayers, blessings, and poems offering comfort and hope to the healthcare workers that give so much.The COVID-19 pandemic has left few of us unaffected, but our healthcare workers have borne the brunt of its impact. Chaplains and clergy across all lines of faith have ministered to those caregivers through prayers and blessings.This curated collection of interfaith prayers, blessings, and poems was written by those who minister to...

Prince Corum has defeated the Chaos Lord Arioch. But any peace for him and his faithful Rhalina is brief. His actions have evoked the murderous anger of Arioch's sister, the dreaded Xiombarg.The Prince in the Scarlet Robe must continue his odyssey, face the terror of the Mabden armies, and challenge the might of the Queen of the Swords. Faced with immense powers of evil on all sides, only the legendary City of the Pyramid offers a glimmer of hope. But Corum must get there first, an...