Point of View

The poet uses many different perspectives and narrative techniques to create the effect of a chorus of voices speaking throughout the collection.

Many of the poems are spoken in the first person singular, including the opening poem, “Garden of Eden,” and many of the domestic poems in Part Four. It is easy to conflate the speaker of a first-person poem with the poet; many of these speakers do share biographical details with Tracy K. Smith, such as her youth in Brooklyn, or her daughter and son. Others clearly speak in the voice of a character, such as “The Greatest Personal Privation,” which turns the letters of a slave owner into the voices of her slaves.

Some of the poems use a technique of direct address, or “apostrophe,” in which the speaker appeals either to a specific listener or to the general reader. In “The United...