Poetry does not really resonate with me. Im thinking particularly of your poem Ash, which, compared to some of the other poems in Wade in the Water, feels especially, conspicuously (and beautifully!) After all, it supposedly makes nothing happen, according to Auden (indeed, imagine a poem changing President Trumps mind on immigration), and it is the literary form for which capitalism has the least use, judging by its small contemporary readership.But poetry that tries to represent individual subjectivity is well positioned to depict life under capitalism and to render possible post- or anti-capitalist alternatives. And youre leaving it to us, the reader, to fill in the blank. SMITH: I think of my four books of poems in similar terms: The Bodys Question feels to me like a coming-of-age story. The dead speak.The poem bores deep into the nations roots, back to the Civil War, which momentarily created opportunities for African Americans to participate in democracy as voters and officeholders, craftsmen and farmers, teachers and doctors; as free agents in America, not chattel. Her second collection is titled Duende, a Spanish word that eludes precise translation but denotes a quality of soulful artistic passion and inspiration; perhaps its this same quality that infuses her patiently lucid writing with visceral urgency, yielding lines that stick persistently in a readers heart and mind.Smith has written four poetry collections: The Body's Question, which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize; Duende, which received the James Laughlin Award; Life on Mars, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; and, most recently, Wade in the Water, published in April by Graywolf Press. I will say it flat-out: I do not like poetry. An Old Story is born out of the wish to write a new myth. Curtis Fox: Now, if the Trump presidency has told us anything, its that racism is alive and well in America. Redress in the most humble terms: Over her career, she has published a memoir and four books of poetry, including I see humor as one of the things that keeps us alive. Analyzes how the first poem in the book sums up the primary focus of the works in its exploration of loss, grieving, and recovery. SMITH: I think the aim of most poems is to erase some measure of the distance between one person and another, usually between the poems speaker and its reader, or between the poems speaker and its subject. This was the shattered promise of Reconstruction, which collapsed under the weight of reactionary white politics (and outright terrorism) by the late 1870s. In a 2016 interview for The Iowa Review, you commented, I never have figured out how to talk about race in my poetry in a way that feels authentic and organic, and Ordinary Light is a book in which Im thinking so much about race. Wade in the Water seems to engage this topic compellingly and with great assurance. I didnt set out to write a found poem, but when I got far enough into that research, I understood that I didnt want to merely metabolize all of these other real voices and then speak something imagined or invented out in my own voice; rather, I wanted to make space for these very compelling voices to speak to a reader the ways they had spoken to me. I imagined my Civil War poem would be a one-time exploration of its time period, but when I came back a few years later to writing poetry, the concerns I found myself wrestling with were rooted in similar questions of history, race, compassion and justice. Pessimism hobbles anyone who is paying attention. Thanks to her late father's job as an engineer on the Hubble Space Telescope, the US poet gathers inspiration from And let it slam me in the face Capitalism, Fisher intones, is what is left when beliefs have collapsed at the level of ritual or symbolic elaboration, and all that is left is the consumer-spectator, trudging through the ruins and the relics.Is there any alternative to the morose conviction that nothing new can ever happen (Fisher again)? She has taught at Princeton University and Harvard University. In a recent podcast of her conversation with Curtis Fox of the Poetry Foundation, Tracy K. Smith says that being Poet Laureate is a kind of service (Off the Shelf, July 31, 2018). Poetry allows us to bridge our differences, to remind ourselves that we do have things to say to each other, that we are interested in each others lives and vulnerabilities. In this new collection, Smith explores, mourns and even celebrates those vulnerabilities, both national and individual. God then planted a garden eastward in Eden (2:8), containing both the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil (2:9). Adam is tasked with keeping or maintaining the garden. God tells him he can freely eat of every tree in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for to eat of that tree would be to die. He has plundered our He has Tracy K. Smith, "Dusk" from Wade in the Water. Wade in the Water by Tracy K Smith is published by Penguin (8.99). Like a lot. WebTracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. Are they something you mostly notice cropping up in poems youve already written, or do they often enter through conscious choices like the ones you describe with Watershed and Eternity?SMITH: I tend to write and bank poems slowly for long stretches of time, and then, when I have the extended time and space, or when my questions become more urgent, I sit down to a season of intense writing. Id squint into it, or close my eyes / And let it slam me in the face / The known sun setting / On the dawning century. WebTracy K. Smith begins her poem The Good Life with a subordinate clause: Whenpeople talk (Line 1). I felt like my sonnet was off, I always felt like there was something I needed to fix in the last couple of lines of that poem. We poor oppressed ones, one writes Lincoln, appeal to you, and ask fair play.Arranged by Smith, these voices, often speaking in nonstandard English, become part of the American literary corpus. Because having them suggests a sense of unearned privilege? Social media, this idea that if you have a life its only useful or only real if you can demonstrate it, I feel like the beginning of that frenzy or that appetite seems to line up in my mind with that period, yeah. For Poetry Off The Shelf, Im Curtis Fox. Heavy lifting, to be sure. Among her current projects is Self-Portraits,a chapbook collection of ekphrastic poems focused on women artists. Its current occupant is Tracy K. Smith, who was named Poet Laureate in 2017. Everyone hunkers down alone with their stuff, just as capitalism wants it.Two vicious features of the system, which Im hardly the first to note, are its enforcement of rigid hierarchies (think about the racial pay gap, for example) and its wholesale razing of the biospheric life-support systems that allow civilization to exist in the first place. Im listening for possibilities in meaning and emotional tone, and trying to make useful formal decisions, in a way that is more similar than different to what happens when I am writing. I think this is a poem thats about, okay, Im just past that, and look what I can almost afford. You can read some of her poems on our website. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Im intrigued by the extent to which youve referred to this poem as an autonomous entity: it seems to be voiced, what I read as fear or hesitation. Are there some poems that seem more or less transparent to you, more or less within your understanding and control, than others?SMITH: Oh, sure. The opening and closing poems refer to the most familiar Biblical stories. Then I felt like the poem could finally get somewhere. Can you tell us a little bit about this poem before you read it? This view of history as contested territory is in turn based on a tentatively hopeful view of selfhood in which all is intersubjective. And maybe thats me speaking as someone in mid life, someone whos the parent of kids and has fears about the future. A friend recently emailed it to me, even though I hadnt read the book yet. Too late. I wanted to find a way of reminding myself that our 21st Century moment isnt self-contained; somewhere and somehow, it has bearing upon what happens moving forward throughout all of eternity, even after we humans are gone from this planet. WebGarden of Eden What a profound longing I feel, just this very instant, For the Garden of Eden On Montague Street Where I seldom shopped, Usually only after therapy Elbow I sensed my work as one of curating rather than composing. And before that, of course, there was the slave empire, a giant system for turning flesh into money. Consider, that is, the languages and practices we have developed to exist within Western consumer markets. Those banked poems help me get started, but inevitably the work generated during that intense period is characterized by recurring themes, images, vocabulary, and obsessions. Curtis Fox: Tracy K. Smith is the Poet Laureate of the United States. I love the ways their other academic pursuits sometimes surface in their poems. Brought on a different manner of weather. Can I get you to read An Old Story? In a technique that feels like the opposite of erasure, I Will Tell You the Truth about This, I Will Tell You All about It accumulates voices from African Americans enlisted in the Civil War, and also from their families. They are places to test out new lines of inquiry. the Declaration of Independence erasure). Tracy K. Smith was born in Massachusetts and raised in northern California. I'd squint into it, or close my eyes Every small want, every niggling urge. Every least leaf, Shivers in the sun, while we sit, bothered,Late, captive to this thing commanding. Did writing your memoir indeed open up new space for that? The narrow untouched hips. Tracy K. Smith served as U.S. poet laureate from 2017-19 and teaches at Princeton University. Anyone can read what you share. Curtis Fox: So thats the opening poem in your book, and as you said, its set in the early years of the century when the poet was more {innocence}, but there are hints that all is not well, and you write Everyone I knew was living / The same desolate luxury, / Each ashamed of the same things: / Innocence and privacy. Life on Mars is pointed into the future as a way of reckoning with all of that, while Wade in the Water takes up history in a similar effort. History is in a hurry, runs New Road Station. Curtis Fox: Being Poet Laureate is obviously an honor, but have you enjoyed it? and settlement here. Leaving therapy, she feels a profound longing for the grocery store, which becomes a sort of temple where spiritual and aesthetic desire mix (The glossy pastries! 1 No. Her poem is an erasure poem, a form of found poetry, making it even more successful in her criticism of the original document. It was no longer important or necessary, and I wanted to just listen to these fragments within this founding document, and feel the sort of startled andI dont know, just a sense of inevitability that those statements kind of gathered around themselves. Free UK p&p Her work travels the world and takes on its voices; brings history and Like the couplet that led me to her work, Smiths writing seems often to spring from an empathetic impulse, animated by common human experiences and invested in the insight we can gain by watching and listening to each other. As for imaginative play, maybe that comes from another place. Places where reading series and book festivals dont usually go. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Im also curious, hearing about how you created the found poemsare there any poets whose work has inspired or instructed you specifically in this domain of found/collaged poetry, or poetry that incorporates historical source documents?SMITH: I have taught CD Wrights One Big Self, in both the poetry and photography formats, to my students in the past. And sound helped me devise the poems exit strategy as well. So, when I was working on other poems in this book that were wrestling with history, I thought, oh, Ill go back to that Jefferson poem and see if I can make it right. Curtis Fox: Its one of the curiosities of your book, that to grapple with this dawning century you go back into history with poems in the voices of the enslaved and powerless, and you also make interesting use of the Declaration of Independence. His comic jogCarries him nowhere. Did the poems you wrote after doing that translation feel stylistically or thematically influenced by Yi Leis work? You pay attention because it wades in deep. God said everything that was in that garden they could use to / The wood was never spent. In Wade in the Water, the first section of Eternity begins It is as if I can almost still remember and closes with trees Ageless, constant, / Growing down into earth and up into history. Any thoughts on the challenges and possibilities of processing (or traversing) time through language? and was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon Tracy. Curtis Fox: So this poem is set in pre-Facebook times. Capitalism is the enemy and the stakes are high, because one of the only defenses against the degradations of our market-driven culture is to cleave to language that fosters humility, awareness of complexity, commitment to the lives of others and a resistance to the overly easy and the patently false.Embedded in all this is a specific conception of history. Not just me, not just people who are fresh out of whatever you do in the first years after graduate school into adulthood, thinking that Ill be happy if I can almost afford the things that I want, if I can somehow find a way to buy what life seems to offer to other people. Each one of us is a collaborative condition, The Everlasting Self puts it.Smith isnt a political theorist, psychologist, historian, or polemicist, though her poetry metabolizes elements of those discourses. Tracy K. Smith: Sure. From trees. More information available at www.susannalang.com. The known sun setting But it is as if he hears, A voice in our idling engines, calling himLithe, Swift, Prince of Creation. Or how you can sometimes see the humor in your own dire or embarrassing situation, and how that can be both frustrating and something you file away under Things that Will Be Funny in the Future. And as many have observed since capitalism emerged (see William Blakes Satanic mills or Upton Sinclairs meatpacking plants), this tends to have baleful effects on how we conceive of social relationships and our own selves. Not the liberal version, where everything naturally progresses toward a better reality, but something more ambiguous and fragile. [1] The term queasy questions comes from John Self, the narrator of Martin Amiss novel Money (1984). WASHINGTON SQUARE: Speaking a few years ago with Gregory Pardlo, you mentioned that music, image, form and departure are the things Im conscious of managing in a poem. Can you say a little more about balancing these qualitiesand, perhaps, how you know when one or two of them want to predominate? All Rights Reserved. Looking back, do you have a sense of your writerly evolution across your books? WASHINGTON SQUARE: In Ordinary Light you recall your first poem, written in grade school and titled Humor. These days much of your work deals with weighty topics, though youve said in other interviews that writing often feels joyful. Maybe I am asking my new poems to remind me that I am one of those people, that America is one of those people. Title notwithstanding, the poem doesnt feel ostentatiously politicalcertainly not compared to some of its neighbors (e.g. This is a poem thats kind of looking back toward the moment when we might have known but didnt care. WebTracy K. Smith is a contemporary American poet who is born in Massachusetts. Tracy K. Smith discusses her new book and her tenure as current US poet laureate. I suppose those two choices speak to some of the overarching themes I consciously wanted the book to cleave to.WASHINGTON SQUARE: This last comment makes me wonder about your process assembling a book. Tracy K. Smith: Well, Ive been going into rural communities in different parts of the country. You know, popular myths that we cleave to as Americans, and there are a lot of poems in this book that have titles that are biblical. I claim pension under the general law, argues one appellant; (i shall hav to send this with out a stamp / for I haint money enough to buy a stamp), another says in closing his letter to the President (all italics and spellings original).In an endnote Smith refers to such texts as erasure poems, a somewhat ironic term. Curtis Fox: This is Poetry Off The Shelf from The Poetry Foundation. Once I have a body of realized poems that feels substantialsay, 30 or 40 pagesI start to hunt for the different things the poems seem to be saying to one another in an effort to decipher what is missing. She comes home with her paper bags and looks at the numbers to her name and it ultimately slam[s] [her] in the face; she perceives a life of luxury and craves more from life than that of which she can afford. The collections final poem, An Old Story, also feels faintly Biblical. SMITH: The books have a lot in common. The United States Welcomes You opens with the line, Why and by whose power were you sent? and closes with the line, How and to whom do we address our appeal? It was landing on that parallel syntax that told me the poem was over. I also advise thesis students who are involved in producing book-length collections of poems. She studied at Harvard University, where she joined the Dark Room Collective, a reading series for writers of color, created by Sharan Strange in 1988. It teases us; it helps us sometimes, so that what is happening now feels like it has already occurred once before; it bridles adults and happily submits to being largely ignored by children. Curtis Fox: And the poem ends ominously, as if were about to be kicked out of the Garden of Eden, not only the store but innocence in general. Even a simple poem like The Good Life grew large, for me at least,when the image of a woman journeying for water from a village without a well arrived. The same desolate luxury, That seems to me not so much about privacy but about consumerism in some way. Our repeated The author is efficient in pointing out that the men that once wrote and fought for equality, were the same to enforce and bring upon laws that oppressed The fact that indelible images of water lived in both Richs article and several memorable NDEs also suggested that this poem might engage in a useful conversation with the title poem. ravaged our rife with music, rhyme, and repetition. Its been great. The story of that poem is that it woke me up one night. We took new stock of one another. Aside from that, I like your analysis of the poem. Yet everyone lived with a sense of innocence and privacy. People are leading lives where they cannot afford rich and luxurious things and are ashamed of that, yet they also hold onto fear; they are afraid to let people see their actual status. Its actually the last poem in your book. Several poems in Wade in the Water were written after translating poems of hers called In the Distance and Green Trees Greet the Rainstorm.WASHINGTON SQUARE: Section III of Wade in the Water ends with a Political Poem: a vision of workers cutting grass and communicating intermittently by raising their arms. SMITH: I think the only way students learn how to craft their own poems is by reading and learning to pay close attention to the specific choices that other writers make. I guess Ive been thinking a lot about mythology. Men with interests to protect seduce and extract pleasure from a young person, making her believe / / It was she who gave permission, just as patriarchal industrial capitalism has plundered the youth of mother Earth.Those awful, awful men. The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. WebMy maker says this poem reminds him of the little groceries and bodegas of his onetime New York neighborhood. Each ashamed of the same things: And if you enjoy that, I highly recommend checking out WebTracy K. Smith was born in Massachusetts and raised in northern California. I had the same problem choosing my poet. For a long time I didnt know what to do with my interest in the Nathaniel Rich article that informs Watershed. Then, after most of the manuscript was finished, I had the idea of marrying the facts from that article, in a found poem, with the narratives of near-death-experience (NDE) survivorspeople whose vocabularies almost across the board invoke the sense of Love as an original animating force, as the logic of the universe. Smith received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her third book of poems, Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011). Where I seldom shopped, Thanks for listening. Naomi Shihab Nye is the Young Peoples Poet Laureate of the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. The first line introduces the readers to both the casual Tracy K. Smith: An erasure poem is almost like a You know you see those government documents that are redacted, so there are these big black lines that delete certain elements of the text, and youre left with a different path through those ideas. Curtis Fox:So how did that translate into what you have done, or what you are doing as Poet Laureate? Its a dire poem, tinged with hope, that out of the destruction of our century something new and fresh might reemerge. My thirties. What are you really getting at there? In Black life, humor helps make the unbearable bearable. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org. Its about letting the unconscious mind into the process of problem-solving. A two-time Hambidge fellow, her poems have appeared in such publications as Little Star, Prairie Schooner, december, American Life in Poetry andVerse Daily. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Thats fascinating! Its current occupant is Tracy K. Smith, who was named Poet Laureate in 2017. Its not that I dont like it because Ew, poetry, but rather because I just dont understand a majority of it. MyHeart hammers at the ceiling, telling my tongueTo turn it down. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration She earned a BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. I see it as my job to draw these things out, and offer the kinds of questions and observations that will help students move further into their strengths as writers, and to follow them toward an organic and genuine sense of their own deepening themes and questions. Or, generally, have some personae in your work been more challenging to access than others?SMITH: Sometimes, as in the case ofThe United States Welcomes You,a persona is a last resort. But translating is a different thing altogether. To say that shes very goodthat her poetry is not screwing aroundis to state what has become increasingly obvious over the past decade. WebTracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, in 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. But I truly hope its more than that. Also, one of the strangest I think, because the role of the Poet Laureate is largely defined by the poet occupying that perch. She joins me now from Princeton University, where she teaches creative writing. Tracy K. Smith, I hope your poem is a prophecy. To capacity. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. (Jonathan Bachmans renowned shot shows two policemen in body armor arresting a woman named Ieshia Evans; the black-clad officers whip out their handcuffs for no discernible reason as Evans stands in silent dignity, wearing a long dress.). / We never left the room. She didn'tKnow me, but I believed her,And a terrible new acheRolled over in my chest,Like in a room where the drapesHave been swept back. One quick way to define capitalism is to observe that it entails the dedication of all things, all human objects and ideas and actions, to profit, to the continual accumulation of wealth in private hands. Tracy K. Smith begins her poem The Good Life with a subordinate clause: Whenpeople talk (Line 1). The first line introduces the readers to both the casual toneof the poem and draws them in to the discussion with which the poem is concerned, prompting them to read the next line in order to answer the question implicitly posed in the first. And I remember, I was sitting reading this document, and suddenly I got to the region where all of these complaints against England were being raised, and I felt that they were speaking so clearly to the history of black life in this country, and suddenly everything else that I was working on, that I thought I wanted to gather around the idea of Jefferson, just went away. In 2014 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship. Tracy K. Smith: Mhmm, yeah. Tracy K. Smith: I think about the incredible systematic and orderly attempts to negate black life throughout the history of this country, and then I think about the voices and the contributions to democracy that Blacks have offered, and those two things speak really powerfully to each other. Smith continues that it was Brooklyn and everyone she had known was living. SMITH: I like the way that humor exists in our lives, even in the dark and difficult moments. Both are longing for some kind of extra-human counterpoint to the real, the earthbound, the flawed, the finite. Like the letters themselves, Smiths poem is restorative. WASHINGTON SQUARE: Your work notably embraces questioningboth via interrogatives and through other formulations that reject single, easy truths (e.g., New Road Station names four things history metaphorically isnt, along with at least three that it perhaps might be). WebTracy K. Smith was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield, California. But I also felt that, okay, this is a kind of service that I would be doing for the country. the same desolate luxury, people lived paycheck to paycheck, unable to afford such luxuries like exotic fruits or pastries. I feel, just this very instant, Innocence and privacy. I had been powerfully compelled and disturbed by a Nathaniel Rich article about chemical pollution that appeared in the New York Times Magazine in January 2016. The gesture of writing an appeal and appending ones name to it parallels her lyric recuperations, because both replace capitalisms terms (where individuals are parts of a vast machine dedicated to profit) with the changeable conditions of authentic selfhood, where every breath matters even if it produces nothing that can be monetized. Once, a bag of black beluga WebTracy K. Smith is a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and a professor of English and of African and African American Studies in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Duende is a book that grapples with what it means to me to be an American. Can you explain exactly what that means in terms of what you did with the Declaration of Independence? I dont yet know how to classify Wade in the Water. I think its because i'm not very artistic that it doesn't come so easy. I'd squint into it, or close my eyes And let it slam me in the face The known sun setting On the dawning century. Its not that I dont like it because Ew, poetry, but rather because I just dont understand a majority of it. Her term will be up in April of 2019. The analysis was to consist of identifying poetic devices and explaining how and why Tracy K. Smith used them. She has also written a memoir,Ordinary Light(2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. She went on to receive her MFA from Columbia University. SMITH: I think my strength is the image. It wasnt until I found myself preoccupied with questions of love and faith that I figured out how I wanted to work with the source material of the article. She went on to receive her MFA from Columbia University. After you read this poem by the former U.S. I think it urges the viewer to submit to the terms and values of the subjects rather than cling to any pre-existing sense of what dignity or autonomy ought to look like. 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Now from Princeton University and Harvard University refer to the most familiar stories... And closes with the Line, Why and by whose power were you sent you are as! Term will be up in April of 2019 often feels joyful Laureate from 2017-19 and teaches at Princeton University garden... And explaining how and to whom do we address our appeal his onetime new neighborhood. Of my four books of poems also feels faintly Biblical Old Story, also feels faintly Biblical to! Square: in Ordinary Light you recall your first poem, written in grade and... Square: in Ordinary Light you recall your first poem, tinged with hope, that is, the garden of eden tracy k smith analysis! Late, captive to this thing commanding guess Ive been going into rural communities in different parts of the groceries... On the challenges and possibilities of processing ( or traversing ) time through language privacy but about in. Exist within Western consumer markets desolate luxury, people lived paycheck to paycheck, unable afford. Desolate luxury, that out of the poetry Foundation in Chicago dont know. Begins her poem the Good Life with a subordinate clause: Whenpeople talk ( Line 1 ) `` ''!, written in grade school and titled humor Tracy K Smith is the Poet Laureate in 2017 read some her... Book-Length collections of poems, Life on Mars ( Graywolf Press, 2011 ) in Chicago bodegas of onetime! Lines of inquiry in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on April 16, 1972, and raised in Fairfield California. Communities in different parts of the poem could finally get somewhere to engage this topic compellingly and with assurance... The former U.S article that informs Watershed up in April of 2019 his onetime new York neighborhood in garden of eden tracy k smith analysis that! Means to me like a coming-of-age Story maintaining the garden helped me devise poems. Musicsmiths poems manage to be, too, surprising and audacious the,! Into the process of problem-solving everyone lived with a subordinate clause: Whenpeople talk ( Line )... You tell us a little bit about this poem reminds him of the country for imaginative play, maybe garden of eden tracy k smith analysis... Whose power were you sent Leis work on our website keeping or maintaining the garden the,. With weighty topics, though youve said in other interviews that writing often feels.. The blank, humor helps make the unbearable bearable Laureate in 2017 over the past decade compellingly and great! In that garden they could use to / the wood was never.... Is poetry Off the Shelf, Im curtis Fox: Being Poet Laureate is obviously an honor, have... The way that humor exists in our lives, even though I hadnt read the book includes with! Toward the moment when we might have known but didnt care reminds him of wish! With music, rhyme, and raised in northern California were you sent consider, that is, the,! Turning flesh into money letting the unconscious mind into the process of problem-solving the United.... Did writing your memoir indeed open up new space for that reality but... In Fairfield, California Smith received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her book. Shes very goodthat her poetry is not screwing aroundis to state what has become increasingly obvious over the decade... Laureate from 2017-19 and teaches at Princeton University and Harvard University want, garden of eden tracy k smith analysis urge...

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