Point of View

The majority of the collection is told through the first person point of view. Most of the poems feature at least some use of the first person singular pronoun, while some shift more toward the third person as the speaker describes events without personally relating them to their own thoughts or emotions. Other poems, such as “It & Co.,” “Us & Co.,” and several others in the first section of the book utilize the first person plural in order to make humanity as a whole the subject of the poem. Overall, the first person voice remains fairly consistent throughout the book, seeming to identify strongly with Tracy K. Smith’s own voice based primarily on the amount of biographical information the speaker shares with the poet.

In the first section of the book, the point of view featured in the poems is often that of a person...