Analysis: A Grief With A Hope, By Tracy K. Smith

A Grief with a Hope
One of the most difficult tasks anyone can undergo is trying to process the death of a close one. The intolerable separation between people is a product of intense human affection. When affected by the death of a loved one, it can result in difficulty for a mourning person to cope with their environment. Moreover, when experiencing grief or loss, mourners acquaint various emotions like pain, sorrow, anger, guilt, and depression. Using all these realities, the author Tracy K. Smith in one of her collections, Life on Mars (2011), provides her personal experience to readers, emphasizing death, its impact, and the process of grieving. “The Speed of Belief,” divided into
The way she words her poems provides a low tone, which indicated that she was in the process of grieving. In the very first section of the poem, Smith uses the word “didn’t” repeatedly. “I didn’t want to wait on my knees/.../I didn’t want.../I didn’t want to believe/” (1-9). It seems that she refuses to accept the fact that she was about to lose her father. Smith’s use of “didn’t” several times throughout the section also indicates that she was having a sense of regret, which is an aftermath of the loss she was going through. Smith experiences guilt that she did not do things that she could have done. She wishes to change the past. At this time, she is being critical of her actions. Moreover, towards the middle of the poem, Smith again repeats the word ,“walk”, at “Spirits stripped of flesh on their slow walk/...to lie down, walk/...in gold stitched robes walk/our limbs tangle in sleep, but our shadows walk/...hollow walk/...he must know...walk?” (35-48).The repetition of this word “walk” throughout this section of the poem is to emphasize that the journey through grief is likened to a walk. Smith is walking through the cities, which resembles like a mourner’s path for her to cope up with the grief. In addition to employing the specific words, “hollow walk,” in the section, Smith illustrates that moving on from a loss is tough. A death of a dearly loved person is both a loss of that person and the
An article, “Metaphor and Literature,’ defines metaphor as a tool that produces “meaningful communication” (MacCormac 59). Similarly, by adding visual metaphors in her poetry, Smith tries to submerge the readers into a deeper level of experience about abstract issues i.e. death and grief. She writes, “You stepped out of the body/Unzipped like a coat” (92-93). Here, Smith gives an insight to the belief that the soul leaves the body after death, which she imagines occurred with her father’s soul. She is trying to give the notion that death involves the separation of the soul. Likewise, in the later part of the poem, Smith uses different species of extinct tigers, “Javan,” “Bali,” and “Caspian,” to symbolize her father (80-82). The emptiness felt by her causes her to imagine her father as a rare species, who might also be alone in heaven. She imagines that her father might have also felt the deep pain in losing one dear to him. Smith describes this loneliness as “a solitary country” (84). However, later, she finds comfort in the fact that her father is no longer in fear. “Night kneels at your feet like a gypsy glistening with jewels” (90). “Night,” is considered to be a symbol of darkness, a time when people usually hide. Smith, adding these images throughout her poetry, tries to say that fear is eliminated in heaven .She emphasizes that her father experiences real power in his