Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

   The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series met at the Wilson Library on Saturday, Aprl 2nd. We discussed  Ordinary Light  by Tracy K. Smith. This book is actually her memoir, which we chose to read for Poetry Month, rather than a poetry collection. Tracy K. Smith has had four collections of poetry published and one of them, Life on Mars , won the Pulitzer Prize 2011. She was also Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 until 2019. Reading her memoir was like reading poetry, as evidenced by the quoted passages below.  The book,  Ordinary Light , chronicles Tracy K. Smith's young life at home with her middle-class family. Her father is in the military and they mostly live on the military base, surrounded by whites.  She's especially close to her mother, who gets sick and dies while Smith is in college. The book actually opens with her mother's death with a prologue titled "The Miracle." p.5 "Then we heard a sound that seemed to carve a tunnel bete