The extraordinary poetry collection, Wade in the Water: Poems by Tracy K. Smith, boldly ties America’s contemporary moment both to our nation’s fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. Smith’s signature voice―inquisitive, lyrical, and wry―turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence is a potent and luminous book by one of America’s essential poets.

* Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize *
* Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection *