KQED's Forum Forum From the Archives: Former Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith Urges Us to 'Fear Less'
Dec 24, 2025
Tracy K. Smith, former U.S. Poet Laureate and acclaimed professor, discusses her book 'Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times.' She explores why poetry can feel intimidating, emphasizing the importance of multiplicity in meaning. Smith encourages listeners to focus on feelings rather than just words and highlights the communal power of poetry. She connects poetry to memory and grief, illustrating how reading aloud can bring poems to life. By dissecting works from Emily Dickinson and Robert Hayden, she invites curiosity and showcases poetry's transformative potential.
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Poems Embrace Multiplicity
- Poems resist single "correct" meanings and invite multiplicity and contradiction.
- Tracy K. Smith says poems explore large, roving feelings that require whole-person attention.
Ask "What Do I Notice?"
- After reading a poem ask, "What do I notice?" to open observation rather than decode for a single answer.
- Tracy K. Smith recommends noticing sonic and formal effects like enjambment without forcing a fixed interpretation.
Dickinson Rewrote Her Sense Of Value
- Tracy K. Smith describes discovering Emily Dickinson's "I'm Nobody" as a child and later re-seeing it against her upbringing that valued being "somebody."
- The poem redirected her toward questions of erasure, invisibility, and belonging.
