How The U.S. Poet Laureate Finds Poetry In Justin Bieber
Happy To Be Here
Greta Johnsen
4.6 • 924 Ratings
🗓️ 1 September 2017
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the 22nd United States Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith wants to make poetry more accessible to people across the country. So WBEZ’s Greta Johnsen put Smith to the ultimate test by having her analyze this summer’s hottest hit, “Despacito” featuring Justin Bieber.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still |
| 0:06.1 | watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you, |
| 0:12.7 | soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making, |
| 0:18.0 | Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago. |
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| 0:34.6 | From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdette. |
| 0:35.5 | I'm Tricia Bogita. |
| 0:36.6 | And I'm Greta Johnson. |
| 0:38.4 | And today we are talking with the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States, Tracy K. Smith. Tracy is the author of several |
| 0:44.1 | volumes of poetry, including one that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011 called Life on Mars, |
| 0:49.1 | that's inspired in part by the fact that her dad worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. |
| 0:53.5 | It also has a little something to do with |
| 0:55.4 | David Bowie. Tracy has also written a memoir and she's working on a libretto for an opera. We'll talk to Tracy about |
| 1:01.8 | all that and her obsession with near-death experiences. And we'll also talk to her about how her |
| 1:07.1 | mission as Poet Laureate is to make poetry as accessible as possible across the |
| 1:11.3 | United States, including rural America. She's all about making sure that poetry can be like a daily |
| 1:16.5 | normal act, which I think is so great because so often we think of poetry as this like |
| 1:21.1 | super fancy hyperliterary thing that's like not super easy to just like dip into for a minute |
| 1:27.0 | and enjoy and then move on with |
| 1:28.2 | your day. Yeah, no, I'm afraid of poetry. I'm poetry phobic. Tell me more. I'm poetry phobic. I'm |
| 1:33.7 | proud of the fact that I'm poetry phobic, but I think that probably the primary reason I've never |
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