Review: Wade in the Water by Tracy K. Smith

OK, it’s not exactly a review, in that it doesn’t encompass the whole book; it’s the first annotation I did for my MFA. Thought you might like to read it!

(Also, it should go without saying, plagiarism is bad; don’t steal my stuff for your own annotations, essays, etc.)

Found Poetry in Tracy K. Smith’s Wade in the Water

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith’s fourth book of poetry, Wade in the Water, is structured in five sections, spanning multiple subjects and timelines: from biblically informed personal origins to the history of slavery in the United States, to ongoing environmental injustice and the struggles of motherhood. Although the intent of individual poems in this ambitious collection is not always clear (due to some wandering metaphors and frustratingly opaque last lines), Smith’s found poetry—particularly in sections II and III—drives home the reality of harms done to the people of this country, especially to black people enslaved by white people. In addition, it illustrates the importance of a sense of self, and facilitates empathy between the reader and speaker, regardless of cultural background.

When I first read “I Will Tell You the Truth about This, I Will Tell You All about It,” I thought it was a persona poem, or a found poem created from unattributed sources, which rankled. The narrative behind the epistles moved me, but I wondered what right Smith could claim to such thievery (oh the irony), until I discovered the notes in the back of the book, detailing every letter and its author. That’s when the piece really came alive for me. The vast variance in literacy among the authors was both humbling and heartbreaking, as was the sense of unity among the voices; the people of this poem are so clearly individual and yet so alike (and completely justified) in their demand “to be free   to go to see my people” (Smith 29).

Beyond these people’s requests to be with their families and lay claim to the money that was rightfully theirs (which I think could be called universal desires), it was the unknown ages and misrecorded names in the final italicized section of the piece that really struck a chord with me. To read “I don’t know my exact age” (35) from the deposition of an adult highlights a privilege most of us don’t realize we have. And while it’s true that even white people didn’t always know their birthdays around that time (“Birthdays were for rich people or national heroes,” Joe Pinsker says, in a 2021 article for The Atlantic), there’s a sense, by this point in the poem, that age was another thing taken from enslaved people, another piece of their identity withheld from them. 

The same goes for names, although, as Smith illustrates, that damage was more deceitful. That slaveholders would put their own name or the name of someone other than the enslaved person’s down for that person’s pension is nothing short of deplorable. I was so moved by the final words, from Hiram Kirkland’s deposition, that I wrote my own poem in response to it. His words read: “Some persons call me Harry and others call me Henry, / but neither is my correct name” (37). Although I wasn’t much interested in my heritage until I graduated from college, my name is something that has always been sacred to me—@catenotkatie was my Twitter handle for a while (though I really only liked to be called Caitlin in school), and when publishers remove the M.S. from my name, I feel like part of myself has been ignored or erased; M for Marie, the middle name I share with my great aunt, and S for Skvorc, the surname of my great grandfather, who came to the U.S. from Croatia in the early 20th century. I, however, have the power and privilege to correct a person, being fully literate, having access to that history, and being alive in the present, unlike the authors of these letters; there is no justice for a truly lost name.

So: By including found poetry like this in her wide-ranging collection, Smith is able to give voice to the voiceless and forgotten, or almost forgotten, and bring people historically, genealogically, or environmentally oblivious to or outside of these experiences and issues into conversation. We need poems like “I Will Tell You the Truth…,” as well as “Declaration,” “Theatrical Improvisation,” and “Watershed” to show us the absurdity of what’s already in the world, what’s built into our society, and how people have fought against the negative aspects of those things, in order to inspire action and foster hope. That is what makes Wade in the Water so powerful.

Works Cited

1. Pinsker, Joe. “The Strange Origins of American Birthday Celebrations.” The Atlantic, 2 Nov. 2021, theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/11/history-birthday-celebrations/62058. Accessed 5 July 2023.
2. Smith, Tracy K. Wade in the Water. Graywolf Press, 2018.