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This phrase recurs throughout Clint Smith's writing: "in the marrow of our bones." It is an example of how words can hold encrypted wisdom — in this case, the reality that memory and emotion lodge in us physically. Words and phrases have carried this truth forward in time long before we had the science to understand it.
Clint Smith is best known for his 2021 book, How the Word Is Passed, but he is first and foremost a poet. He and Krista discuss how his various life chapters have been real-world laboratories for him to investigate the entanglement between language and the intelligence of the body — and the related entanglement between history and place. His poetic sensibility has singularly opened readers to approach a generative reckoning with American history — on whatever side of that history our ancestors stood.
Clint Smith has a way of making reckoning possible at a humanizing, softening, bodily level — in the marrow, you might say, of our bones.
Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. His narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and many other honors. His poetry collections are Counting Descent and Above Ground.
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
Natasha Trethewey — Miscegenation
James Wright — A Blessing
Gregory Pardlo — Wishing Well
Ada Limón — Wonder Woman
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Leanne O'Sullivan — Leaving Early
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Emily Dickinson — 1383
Raymond Antrobus — Miami Airport
Patrick Kavanagh — The One
Ali Cobby Eckermann — Kulila
Kei Miller — Book of Genesis
Lemn Sissay — Some Things I Like
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Ross Gay — Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt
Allison Funk — The Prodigal’s Mother Speaks to God
Jane Mead — Substance Abuse Trial
Ocean Vuong — Seventh Circle of Earth
Tracy K. Smith — Song
Marie Howe — My Mother’s Body
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