As Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith Hit the Road

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2022

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tracy K. Smith was named Poet Laureate in 2017, at the beginning of the fierce partisan divide of the Trump era. She quickly turned to her craft to address the deep political divisions the election laid bare, putting together a collection called “American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time.” Then she hit the road, visiting community centers, senior centers, prisons, and colleges, and reading poems written by herself and others for groups small and large. “It was exhausting, and exhilarating, and it was probably the best thing I could have done as an American,” she told The New Yorker’s poetry editor, Kevin Young.

This segment originally aired July 5, 2019.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNWC Studios and the New Yorker.
0:13.6	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnik.
0:17.1	Over the decades, there have been some very high-profile investigative panels that have looked
0:21.9	into national and political crises.
0:24.4	The Key Forver Committee famously looked into organized crime.
0:28.5	The Warren Commission in the early 60s investigated the Kennedy assassination and the Senate
0:33.6	held its Watergate hearings which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon.
0:38.8	And yet, arguably none of those committees has had to tackle a political emergency as profound
0:44.6	as the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
0:48.1	The basic contours of what happened at the Capitol have never really been in doubt, yet
0:52.3	the Select Committee had fundamental questions it needed to answer.
0:56.9	This trumps in action during the writing a failure of leadership or a real strategy
1:01.6	away of fomenting chaos to retain power.
1:05.5	Regrupes like the Oath Keepers, just a bunch of angry white nationalists or were they
1:10.2	in fact the armed vanguard of a coup?
1:14.1	The Committee has just released its official report and the New Yorker is publishing it
1:19.0	in book form, partnering with Seladon Books.
1:22.3	The report is comprehensive, let's say, long in other words, and taking in every ugly
1:27.6	detail of Trump's attempt to delegitimize this election is honestly a challenge to the
1:32.9	spirit.
1:34.5	But as one member of the Committee, Jamie Raskin of Maryland told me, the Committee's
1:38.5	work here was to establish a definitive historical record and the rest is up to the Justice Department
	...

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