Description: "Smith's new book is scorching in both its steady cognizance of America's original racial sins . . . and apprehension about history's direction. . . . These historical poems have a homely, unvarnished sort of grace." -- The New York Times "Smith's poetry is an awakening itself." -- Vogue "In these poems, with both gentleness and severity, Smith generously accepts what is an unusually public burden for an American poet, bringing national strife home, and finding the global in the local." --NPR.org "[ Wade in the Water ] considers the state of the union with characteristic grace. . . . Smith holds this chorus together quite beautifully, often embedding contrasting fragments of text and tone in classical forms and schemes." -- Harper's " Wade in the Water . . . deftly covers 250 years of the American experience, from the refugee's plight to a company's toxic spill tothe complications of black motherhood." -- Mother Jones "In lines that are as lyrical as they are wise . . . Smith makes connections between the current state of American culture and its history." -- BuzzFeed "Deftly, Tracy K. Smith--the reigning poet laureate of the United States--illuminates America's generational wounds." -- New York Magazine "We are in good worlds with Smith leading the poetic charge, as Wade in the Water attests." --The Millions "The poems in Wade in the Water are--in classic Smith fashion--gorgeously nuanced in music and in feeling and occasionally offbeat in their logic. . . . Smith lands on the power of art and its ability to pierce us 'suddenly / By pillars of heavy light.'" --Poets.org "Majestic. . . . This is a formally varied, masterful collection from the nation's poet laureate." -- BookPage "Readers will be moved by this carefully crafted collection. It is entirely new and innovative." --New York Journal of Books " Wade in the Water examines . . . injustice (political and personal) with sharp insight and telling detail. . . . While Smith repeatedly calls injustice and its perpetrators to account, her poems her poems also contain deep compassion and an insistence on hope." -- Shelf Awareness "Tracy K. Smith weaves together past and present, personal and political in ways that are at once urgent and timeless." -- The Arkansas International "On a craft level, these poems are impeccable. . . . I know brilliance when I read it and this book is brilliant." --Roxane Gay, Goodreads "Poetry requires acts of exquisite selection and distillation that Smith, poet laureate of the United States, performs with virtuosity and passion throughout her profoundly affecting fourth collection. . . . The sacred and the malevolent are astutely juxtaposed in this beautifully formed, deeply delving, and caring volume." -- Booklist , starred review "For Smith, poetry is hospitable: accommodating whatever she is moved to write. Her work witnesses, protests and raises its own roof. . . . Smith emerges as a poet in charge of her own creation myth and a recorder of destructive realities." -- The Observer (UK)

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