Purchase College Hosts Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet

Purchase College-SUNY will be hosting An Evening with Tracy K. Smith: A Lecture, Reading, and Conversation.

Presented by the Purchase College School of Humanities, the event is part of the Durst Distinguished Lecture Series, which brings preeminent writers to the Westchester community. Smith is the author of three books of poetry, including Life on Mars, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her most recent book is the acclaimed memoir Ordinary Light.

“As a poet, it seems that Tracy K. Smith can do everything and do it well. She writes sonnets and ghazals and villanelles, and her verse constantly shifts registers, moving from David Bowie to cosmology to science fiction–often in a single poem,” says Anthony Domestico, assistant professor of literature at Purchase College.

He adds, “’The Speed of Belief,’ an elegy for Smith’s father published in Life on Mars​, displays all of the virtues that make her such a fantastic poet: formal inventiveness, skillful imagery, and emotional honesty. A former student of mine keeps Life on Mars​ on his bed stand, and I can see why. Smith is the kind of poet you want to return to again and again because you know her work will offer different rewards each time.”

Louise Yelin, professor of literature at Purchase, comments, “Tracy K. Smith’s memoir, Ordinary Light, suggests that Tolstoy got it wrong when he said that happy families are all alike. In this quiet, lovely book, Smith vividly and tenderly remembers a family both happy and unique.”