INTRODUCTION
Tracy K. Smith (1972- ) was born in Massachusetts and grew up in California. She graduated from Harvard and received a graduate degree from Columbia. Smith began publishing her poetry in the early 21st century and has since received wide acclaim. She served as the nation’s poet laureate, appointed by the Librarian of Congress, during the period from 2017-19. Her poetry has won numerous awards. She is currently an English and African American Studies professor at Harvard. The poem, “Declaration,” is an example of erasure, which creates poetry by removing words from an existing text. The poem first appeared in the New Yorker magazine in 2017 without italics and then in a published volume in 2018 with italics (as reproduced here). In this case of “found poetry,” Smith, as poet laureate, tackles the process of revisiting Thomas Jefferson’s prose in the Declaration of Independence. In particular, Smith focuses on the second section of the Declaration, not the famous preamble with its celebration of natural rights, but rather the “train of abuses” committed by the King (and Parliament) against the American colonists. Smith clearly finds resonance not only to the African American experience but also to modern-day abuses in the American system and uses erasure to help focus the reader on the evident hypocrisy that she sees then and now.
Declaration
He has
sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people
He has plundered our—
ravaged our—
destroyed the lives of our—
taking away our—
abolishing our most valuable—
and altering fundamentally the Forms of our—
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for
Redress in the most humble terms:
Our repeated
Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration
and settlement here.
—taken Captive
on the high Seas
to bear—