{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20261010T034321Z-reviewed-full-unique-works","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/1555978363?tag=bookfrontie00-20","asin":"1555978363","authors":["Tracy K. Smith"],"book_id":"9781555978365","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/wade-in-the-water-9781555978365","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781555978365.jpg?v=7803146604a8417e","description":"Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection The extraordinary new poetry collection by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United States Even the men in black armor, the ones Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else Are they so buffered against, if not love’s blade Sizing up the heart’s familiar meat? We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat. Love: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean. Love: naked almost in the everlasting street, Skirt lifted by a different kind of breeze. —from “Unrest in Baton Rouge” In Wade in the Water , 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. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. 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. Here, private utterance becomes part of a larger choral arrangement as the collection widens to include erasures of The Declaration of Independence and the correspondence between slave owners, a found poem comprised of evidence of corporate pollution and accounts of near-death experiences, a sequence of letters written by African Americans enlisted in the Civil War, and the survivors’ reports of recent immigrants and refugees. Wade in the Water is a potent and luminous book by one of America’s essential poets.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9781555978365","publication_date":"20190326","publisher":"Graywolf","slug":"wade-in-the-water","subtitle":"Poems","title":"Wade in the Water"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"POE005050","confidence_band":"medium","label":"African American Poetry","score":0.8055,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023060","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Political & Protest Poetry","score":0.777,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Place Poetry","score":0.7715,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"POE005050","confidence_band":"medium","label":"African American Poetry","score":0.8055,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023060","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Political & Protest Poetry","score":0.777,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Place Poetry","score":0.7715,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"POE005050","confidence_band":"high","label":"African American Poetry","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"POE024000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Women Poets","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"African American Poetry","score":0.8055,"slug":"african-american-poetry"},{"label":"Political & Protest Poetry","score":0.777,"slug":"political-protest-poetry"},{"label":"Place Poetry","score":0.7715,"slug":"place-poetry"}],"reader_fit":["Readers drawn to poetry linking contemporary America with its founding history","Good for readers interested in poems combining lyric, documentary, and archival voices"],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Tracy K. Smith"],"book_id":"9781555975845","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781555975845.jpg?v=8d16bc3fd486ef15","score":0.711,"title":"Life on Mars","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781555975845"},{"authors":["Danez Smith"],"book_id":"9781555977856","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781555977856.jpg?v=9b896eb9135a5b8f","score":0.7095,"title":"Don't Call US Dead","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781555977856"},{"authors":["Tracy K Smith"],"book_id":"9781324050988","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781324050988.jpg?v=4bf2cb3826847244","score":0.7028,"title":"Fear Less","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781324050988"},{"authors":["Natasha Trethewey"],"book_id":"9780618872657","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780618872657.jpg?v=8380ea3eff48e076","score":0.6856,"title":"Native Guard","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780618872657"},{"authors":["Natasha Trethewey"],"book_id":"9780544586208","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780544586208.jpg?v=a92aaf6817f42997","score":0.6847,"title":"Thrall","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780544586208"},{"authors":["Patricia Smith"],"book_id":"9781668055724","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781668055724.jpg?v=a844f25a63e09261","score":0.6808,"title":"The Intentions of Thunder","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781668055724"},{"authors":["Terrance Hayes"],"book_id":"9780143133186","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780143133186.jpg?v=05967ec2f5937888","score":0.6757,"title":"American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780143133186"},{"authors":["Saul Williams"],"book_id":"9781476779324","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781476779324.jpg?v=189a1472eedc5c5a","score":0.668,"title":"US (a.)","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781476779324"}],"topics":[],"what_you_get":["Themes: American history and citizenship, Power, wealth, and violence, Spirit and the everlasting.","Pacing: mixed tempo with quieter and high-intensity stretches.","Reading lane: African American Poetry and Political & Protest Poetry."]},"llm_signals":{"confidence":0.92,"pacing":"mixed","reader_fit":["Readers drawn to poetry linking contemporary America with its founding history","Readers interested in poems combining lyric, documentary, and archival voices"],"themes":["American history and citizenship","Power, wealth, and violence","Spirit and the everlasting"],"tropes":[]},"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":true,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":272,"goodreads_ratings_count":3818,"goodreads_reviews_count":577,"quality_score":0.9561}}