Ruth Franklin:  All right, I have another question which is what does it feel like as a poet to be an official representative of the U.S. Government?
Tracy K. Smith:  To be really honest, I’m thinking of as something other than that, I’m thinking of it as someone who can be an official representative of the art form in America.  That feels amazing. It feels great to be able to advocate for what I love and what I do and what I think about, and what I kind of cleave to when I’m in need of something or if I’m happy.  Poetry is a way of life for me and I wish it was more central to everyone’s life.  I think it’s a great tool for processing experience, for talking to ourselves about what we think and how we feel.  So I feel that’s what I’m doing, that’s what I’m representing.  I know it’s an official position, but I feels so far from the work of the government in every other context.  It certainly doesn’t feel that I’m being called upon to talk or think about policy, so I’m just thinking about what I have to say to this country about this art form of poetry and how it might serve us even in our private, day to day lives.
Rob Casper:  You know, that does raise a question too about how you’ve seen past poets laureate and what they’ve been able to accomplish in that position and what poets laureate mean to the literary community and mean to the art.  
Tracy:  Well I think the first poet laureate that I heard speak that I was aware of, was Rita Dove, when I was in graduate school.  She talked about wanting to bring more people into poetry events and so she hosted a reading series in D.C.  And she was excited that many people were coming for the cookies and the cheese in the room, and also staying for the poetry. And I liked that as sort of the social offering.  And then I remember Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poems project because of the ways that everyday people talked about the poems that they revered, hearing them read or recite their favorite poems, seemed like a beautiful gesture.  I always used to feel like I wished that America was like Ireland, where people seemed to sit around in bars and talk about poems or at least that what I imagined, and that gave me a sense that maybe it does happen a little bit or could happen more.  More recently, now that I understand that there’s a project people [poets laureate] set out to do, I guess maybe made me imagine that this fantasy that I about poetry as a vehicle for crossing all these divides or moving from one kind of social consciousness to another, it made me believe that it could be a sanctioned project, one that could actually take me from one part of the country to another.
Rob: I think there’s a notion of what we think of as the federal government, and I’m imagining where that question came from, and sort of how people around the country talk about the federal government, but I also think that it’s interesting to think about the positon in relationship specifically to The Library Of Congress as a federal institution and maybe you could talk about what you think of when you think of the library?
Tracy:  Well, I’ll tell you what my daughter says:  she came to the reading in September and all fall, every Wednesday on library day she was so excited to brag to her school librarian that she had met the most important librarian in the world, and had been to the biggest library, and I think that child’s view is really an accurate view of what The Library Of Congress is: this mammoth church of books and information.  I love that this position is connected to that institution which you visit as a child, which you think about every time you get a new book and you see that information in the front of the book, to realize it’s an actual place.  And not just a static place, it’s a place with a kind of social mission, I think it’s thrilling.  I have this private view that that is what the afterlife is like (laughter from Rob):  This huge vault and there are all of these people, these saint like people, working quietly to make sure nothing is lost.  And I think that’s wonderful.  
Rob:  I also think it’s interesting to think about the library as an institution that represents the safekeeping and promotion of knowledge and creativity in our country, and the fact that it sits across from the capitol and next to the Supreme Court feels important to me.  That somehow it’s connecting to those institutions in a meaningful way.  I don’t know, does that make any sense to you?  
Tracy:  I don’t know what to add to that, but it’s a nice symbolic geography.  I don’t even really know that I’ve gotten fully to the heart of this Elizabeth Bishop poem, View of the Capitol from The Library Of Congress, but I feel like it does a lot of great things with geography, this quiet presence, and a lot of energy and commotion that sits in other parts of the landscape of the capitol.
Rob:  That does raise the question of what it’s like to inhabit that office, the poetry room.  We’re up in the balcony of the Jefferson room, the oldest of the three Capitol Hill campus rooms of the library, with this amazing view of the capitol, and it’s just a strange experience to go up there for the first time.  Especially for the other poets laureate that I’ve seen go there to sort of check out their office, and maybe you can talk about what that meant to you.
Tracy:  it’s a moving experience.  I mean all of the federal buildings that are incredibly moving.  But it’s something about being in that space, where Gwendolyn Brooks and Elizabeth Bishop have sat and worked, it feels holy to me in a certain way as an artist.  I feel surreal sense of, I won’t even dare call it belonging, but there’s something really just sort of stunning to me about being able to make use of this space.  To sit at this desk where Bishop probably has sat.  There’s a sense of trust that I’ve been entrusted with something that the poets I revere have done something with.  
Rob:  I feel it’s also a matter of reaching a certain age, when you find yourself in that position, that you’ve read about these poets and suddenly there you are in the same place and having a certain kind of responsibility to continue what they were a part of as well.  Did you think about any of those touch tone poets as we were developing the project?  Was there a sense of oh, I want to follow in the footsteps of Gwendolyn Brooks for example, who did a lot, while she was in D.C., to connect to the D.C. community?
Tracy:  Well, I think about Brooks a lot, just in general.  Usually because I feel I must become more generous because she was consummately generous:  she sponsored prizes for young people, and wrote the checks from her checkbook, she was a mentor to so many people, and she was just such a generous force, such a great model.  And when you think about what writers do, it’s such a selfish thing.  You’re thinking about what you think about, and your way, and you’re pushing yourself to grow your own sense of perspective or self-esteem, and then to be reminded of writers who did that and gave a lot away, I think it’s important to acknowledge that and what it might suggest is a path forward.  I don’t know how I feel about how I stand, I try to push myself to be giving to the people who are coming out to these events.  I have felt so lucky to have so many people wanting to talk about poetry, wanting to get books signed.  I hope that what I offer is genuine in those encounters, because they’re so brief, and it’s a one time thing.