‘Such Color: New and Selected Poems’ by Alumna Tracy K. Smith ‘97 Out Now

By
Rebecca Pinwei Tseng
October 22, 2021

Graywolf Press released Such Color: New and Selected Poems by alumna Tracy K. Smith '97 on October 5, 2021.

Such Color marks Smith’s first career-spanning volume, comprising of the best poems from Smith’s four award-winning collections as well as thirty pages of new poems. Smith’s work navigates desire and the body, investigates history across time, extends towards the outer reaches of space, and delves into the violence facing language and people. The collection “traces an increasingly audacious commitment to exploring the unknowable, the immense mysteries of existence.”

In a starred review, Publishers Weekly writes, “Both timeless and urgent, [Such Color] serves as a humbling and invigorating reawakening from sorrow and apathy.” Vogue also praises Such Color, remarking that “Tracy K. Smith’s poetry is an awakening itself.”

bookcover

In a starred review, Publishers Weekly writes, “Both timeless and urgent, [Such Color] serves as a humbling and invigorating reawakening from sorrow and apathy.” Vogue also praises Such Color, remarking that “Tracy K. Smith’s poetry is an awakening itself.”

The Best American Poetry 2021 (Scribner, 2021), edited by guest editor Smith alongside series editor David Lehman, was also recently published. Established in 1988, The Best American Poetry series comprises the year's most memorable poems and includes insights and comments from the poets themselves. The writers in this year’s edition include Henri Cole, Billy Collins, Louise Erdrich, Nobel Laureate Louise Glück, Terrance Hayes, and Kevin Young.

Tracy K. Smith is a professor and the Chair of Princeton's Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. She is the author of the memoir Ordinary Light (Knopf, 2015) and four books of poetry: Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011), which received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize; Duende (Graywolf Press, 2007), recipient of the 2006 James Laughlin Award; and The Body's Question (Graywolf Press, 2003), which won the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. From 1997 to 1999, Smith was a Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University. Smith is also the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Award, and a Whiting Award. From 2017 to 2019, she served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States.

Such Color: New and Selected Poems and The Best American Poetry 2021 are now available for purchase.