{"product_id":"wade-in-the-water-paperback","title":"WADE IN THE WATER (Paperback)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eShortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFinalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe extraordinary new poetry collection by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United States\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEven the men in black armor, the ones\u003cbr\u003eJangling handcuffs and keys, what else\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAre they so buffered against, if not love’s blade\u003cbr\u003eSizing up the heart’s familiar meat?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat.\u003cbr\u003eLove: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLove: naked almost in the everlasting street,\u003cbr\u003eSkirt lifted by a different kind of breeze.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—from “Unrest in Baton Rouge”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eWade in the Water\u003c\/i\u003e, Tracy K. Smith boldly ties America’s contemporary moment both to our nation’s fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith’s signature voice—inquisitive, lyrical, and wry—turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence. Here, private utterance becomes part of a larger choral arrangement as the collection widens to include erasures of \u003ci\u003eThe Declaration of Independence\u003c\/i\u003e and the correspondence between slave owners, a found poem comprised of evidence of corporate pollution and accounts of near-death experiences, a sequence of letters written by African Americans enlisted in the Civil War, and the survivors’ reports of recent immigrants and refugees. \u003ci\u003eWade in the Water\u003c\/i\u003e is a potent and luminous book by one of America’s essential poets.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Smith, Tracy K","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52337127457042,"sku":"9781555978365","price":6.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0270\/9238\/5846\/files\/27433263482741_a53217e1-cf97-4006-a209-3abfbea37a37.jpg?v=1780433595","url":"https:\/\/hbswarehousesale.com\/products\/wade-in-the-water-paperback","provider":"Harvard Book Store Warehouse Sale","version":"1.0","type":"link"}