Celebrating the Power of Words: Poems from New America Fellows Clint Smith and Sarah Kay

Poetry holds the unique ability to capture the complexities of culture, identity, and the pursuit of justice—transforming moments into movements and words into calls for change. Today, on World Poetry Day, we celebrate the profound impact of poetry, not only as a form of artistic expression but as a mirror to our shared human experiences.

The Thread highlights the incredible work of New America Fellows and acclaimed poets Sarah Kay and Clint Smith below. Through their powerful words, they not only illuminate the realities of our time, drawing connections between personal narratives and broader societal issues, but also create a space for dialogue and introspection.

In addition to their poems, Kay and Smith offer their reflections on the craft, their inspiration, and the personal and societal power of poetry. Their words invite us to pause, listen, and understand that poetry is more than art—it can be a push for change and a bridge between us all.

Where is my prize for most unreliable narrator?
I would never lie to you, but I lie to me all the time. 
I say, Look at that bird, this childhood memory, 
that light falling across his body in the steam,
& say, Boom. A stone Truth. A Poem. & you trust me.
You trace your finger along the constellation I’m insisting
into existence & let my rickety astrology determine the weather.
But this is all dominos.
I am just trying to place enough words between now & The End 
to trick The End into coming later. 
I slip single doses of myself into the pockets of everyone I love, 
worried about serving sizes, hoping they do not sour once I’m gone. 
I spent thirty-two years in New York City 
& every metaphor is stacked with taxi cabs & subways.
I spent two weeks in the woods & suddenly every poem swelled 
with rhododendrons & the smell of firewood.
I am the most porous sponge that ever sponged.
I throw myself off every emotional cliff & build a pogo stick on the way down. 
I am not an optimist but I play one in the group chat. 
I don’t know who I think I need absolution from, 
but I carry around a shiny report card everywhere I go just in case. 
I thought I wanted a boyfriend but I actually wanted an audience. 
My father carried dried mushrooms from the market 
to the wood table on the front porch so he could watch 
the way the late afternoon sun made patterns in their crackled skin 
& called my mother out of the house so she could stand next to him 
& look at it too. They were so excited they forgot to close 
the screen door & the bugs made a home of the kitchen. 
I have never accomplished anything in my life 
other than the seven mile run to the lighthouse. 
This land, someone else’s, this language, someone else’s, 
even the ocean of fear that pours out of me—an inheritance, 
or if not an inheritance then a reaction, a riverbank 
formed out of a rushing past I had nothing to do with. 
I make a phone call & when you don’t pick up 
the whole house falls down around me. 
I am the center of my own dramatic universe & it appalls me. 
In my dream, from somewhere down a hallway of locked doors, a voice asks,
What if you aren’t as bad as you suspect you are?
What if you’ll never be as good as you ache?
& then, softer, in the kind of whisper that wouldn’t even fog the glass,
What if what you are is boring
& alive, what are you going to do then?

This poem was originally published in Issue 40 of The Adroit Journal.

The poem dives deeply into internal conflict and personal vulnerability. What inspired you to explore the idea of yourself as an unreliable narrator? Is this commentary on poets as reliable narrators compared to other types of writers?

Sarah: I really do think about poem-making as constellation building, because in a poem I call a reader or audience member’s attention from one image to another, as though pointing out, this star, this star, and this star, and… tada! It’s a [bear]! (Or whatever metaphor, meaning, or volta I’ve created, based on my pointing.) For the most part, no one questions or challenges me about the constellation I’m claiming is there, because I am the trusted authority in my poems. Everyone goes, “yes, look at that [bear],” but I have now been working on a big nonfiction project (my first), and have discovered that when writing nonfiction, I’m not only not “The Authority,” I’m also constantly worrying if I’m pointing at the wrong stars. This particular poem was an attempt to be honest about the uncertainty and unreliability that is always thrumming through me, no matter how confident the narrator of my poems sometimes sounds. 

The final lines ask, “What if what you are is boring & alive, what are you going to do then?”—evoking a sense of existential self-awareness. What are you trying to explore with this question? What do you hope readers will take away?

Sarah: I access anxiety and shame very easily, very quickly. But as I’ve gotten older, I keep looking for opportunities to strip away layers of shame that don’t need to be there. The two previous lines of this poem are referencing voices that are sponsored by Big Shame™ and Big Anxiety™: “You are bad, so you must work hard at all times to be good.” I tried to find the tiniest crack in those convictions: What if you aren’t as bad as you suspect you are, or what if you’ll never be as good as you ache? I wonder if it is possible to poke a hole in the stories those shame-voices have told me my whole life—if it’s possible that there is something else to be obsessed with other than whether I am bad or good. If so, I have to figure out what else to wonder about; what else to do with all this not-bad and not-good aliveness, which is a new frontier for me.

The redwoods are on fire in California. A flood submerges a neighborhood
that sat quiet on the coast for three centuries. A child takes their first steps
and tumbles into a father’s arms. Two people in New Orleans fall in love
under an oak tree whose branches bend like sorrow. A forest of seeds are
planted in new soil. A glacier melts into the ocean and the sea climbs closer
to the land. A man comes home from war and holds his son for the first
time. A man is killed by a drone that thinks his jug of water is a bomb. Your
best friend relapses and isn’t picking up the phone. Your son’s teacher calls
to say he stood up for another boy in class. A country below the equator
ends a twenty year civil war. A soldier across the Atlantic fires the shot that
begins another. The scientists find a vaccine that will save millions of people’s
lives. Your mother’s cancer has returned and doctors say there is nothing
else they can do. There is a funeral procession in the morning and a
wedding in the afternoon. The river that gives us water to drink is the same
one that might wash us away.

This poem was originally published in Clint Smith’s Above Ground.

This poem juxtaposes moments of joy, sorrow, birth, and death. What motivated you to explore these themes? Was there a specific event?

Clint: “All At Once” is the first poem in my book Above Ground, which is largely a meditation on my early years of fatherhood. I have two kids, now seven and six years old. Parenting, I came to understand, is an experience that can be at once remarkable, wondrous, and inspiring while simultaneously being exhausting, grueling, and fear-inducing. It got me thinking about how so much of life is like that. Laughter alongside despair. Wonder alongside terror. Gratitude alongside resentment. Experiences that ask us to hold the fullness and complexity of the human experience, well, all at once.

There’s a sense of urgency in the poem as it navigates both personal and global crises. How do you hope readers will respond? Do you write with a specific reader in mind and how they might receive the message or call to action? 

Clint: I don’t mean to sound trite about this, but I really write these poems for myself. Obviously, I’m delighted and grateful by the opportunity to publish and share them, but the experience of writing the poems themselves is a deeply personal one. Poems, for me, are a way of paying attention to the world. They push me to examine what I see happening around me, and what I feel happening inside of me, more closely.

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