Join Siegal Lifelong Learning for an upcoming remote lecture, “Extra-ordinary Light: The Poetry of Tracy K. Smith,” Friday, Sept. 24, from noon to 1:30 p.m. ET. Led by Michelle Smith Quarles, programming associate at Literary Cleveland and faculty member at Cuyahoga Community College, attendees will explore this year’s CWRU Common Reading author and the 2017 U.S. Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith.
In her memoir, Ordinary Light, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet writes: “Silence feeds pain, allows it to fester and thrive. What starves pain, what forces it to release its grip, is speech.” This lecture will explore the unique and important ways that Smith has spoken away the silence that feeds her pain and ours in the poetry of her four books, The Body’s Question, Duende, Life on Mars and Wade in the Water.