December 4, 2023

The Culture Show Podcast · Dec 4, 2023 · 49m

This is the Culture Show.

Coming up: Tracy K. Smith.

Through her poetry, the Pulitzer-prize winner probes the meaning of life. She meditates on what happens to our souls when we die. She communes with the dead. And ultimately, she makes the personal universal.

Smith’s poems scrutinize oppression, the contradiction that is the American dream, and the injustices that plague our nation.

All these themes converge in her new memoir “To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul. ” It’s lyrical, it’s urgent and in this work –as Smith puts it–she is looking at Black strength and asking the…