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and manages to seamlessly connect her grief over losing her mother with scientific and cultural touchstones such as the Hubble telescope and David Bowie. Unlike the reclusive Dickinson, Smith is fully engaged in the messiness and unpredictability of life as it takes place in the global community. As poet laureate, she was something of a language ambassador, traveling the United States to meet people of all stripes and woo them with free verse. Her message: there’s a lot of pain, injustice, and alienation in this country, but so much good stuff, too. A beautiful poem reminds us of that. If poetry isn’t a go-to for you (though it should be!), there’s plenty else to love in Smith’s oeuvre. Her 2015 memoir Ordinary Light tells how she came of age as a writer, a Black woman, and a daughter whose beloved mother was a devout Christian and whose equally beloved father was a secular man of science. Her new memoir, To Free the Captives, takes a look even further back, at Smith’s relatives from generations past. In trying to piece together lives that have been lost to history and discrimination, she gives a powerful and, yes, poetic overview of race in America.
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