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.
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"Love is still the only revenge. It grows each time the earth is set on fire."
From Poetry Unbound: Benjamin Gucciardi — The Rungs
Patronage and Love: On Being's Becoming
Vivek Murthy — To Be a Healer
Vivek Murthy — A Meditation for Moments of Despair, and To Feel Less Alone
[Unedited] Vivek Murthy with Krista Tippett
Barbara Brown Taylor — “This Hunger for Holiness”
[Unedited] Barbara Brown Taylor with Krista Tippett
Ruth Wilson Gilmore — “Where life is precious, life is precious.”
Janine Benyus — Biomimicry, an Operating Manual for Earthlings
Rick Rubin — Magic, Everyday Mystery, and Getting Creative
Isabel Wilkerson — "We all know in our bones that things are harder than they have to be."
James Bridle — The Intelligence Singing All Around Us
[Unedited] James Bridle with Krista Tippett
Nick Offerman — Working with Wood, and the Meaning of Life
Ada Limón — “To Be Made Whole”
“The Quiet Machine” by Ada Limón
“Dead Stars” by Ada Limón
“A New National Anthem” by Ada Limón
Amanda Ripley — Stepping out of "the zombie dance" we're in, and into "good conflict" that is, in fact, life-giving
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