Declaration

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Literary Analysis

Tracy K. Smith follows a long line of prominent African American woman poets that started with Phillis Wheatley in colonial America. She is the fourth Black woman to serve as US poet laureate after Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, and Natasha Trethewey.

While an undergraduate student at Harvard, Smith joined the Dark Room Collective. Harvard undergraduates started this group in 1988 as a tribute to essayist James Baldwin. The group’s name came from the photography darkroom where literature by Black authors was once stored in the Harvard library. The Dark Room Collective was a space where up-and-coming and prominent Black writers could showcase their work. The reading series paired older writers with younger ones. The collective closed in 1998.

Smith is a highly lauded contemporary poet in the United States. Her writing touches on racial issues, identity, sexuality, and science fiction. She taught poetry writing to the next generation of American poets at prestigious universities. As such, Smith has a strong influence on the landscape of 21st-century American poetry.

The New Yorker published “Declaration” at the start of her tenure as US poet laureate in October 2017. This poem was a mission statement for her role as laureate in a period of political and social turmoil that continues today. As such, “Declaration” explores the background of America’s most famous document and reframes it for contemporary contexts. Likewise, Wade in the Water is a collection of historical topics that resonate with the modern political climate in the US.

Cultural Context

The “Declaration of Independence” is woven into the cultural context of the United States. In its day, this “Declaration” contained radical ideas about citizenship, subjectivity, and nationhood. Its publication marked a change in the aims of the American Revolution, from fair rule by the United Kingdom to a total break from colonization. The men who signed this document wanted independence. They took an enormous risk by declaring this type of freedom from an expansive 18th-century empire.

Every child in the United States reads the document in school at some point. However, the high language in this early modern legal document makes it difficult for young audiences today to fully understand. Adult audiences likely gloss over it for the parts they remember from childhood. So despite the document’s largescale influence on American culture, the “Declaration of Independence” is often misused outside its historical context. For example, the phrase “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” should be considered within the context of whom it protects and whom it fails.

Moreover, Americans rarely believe they have the authority to challenge the “Declaration of Independence.” Tracy K. Smith had this authority as the poet laureate. Smith chose to focus on the part of the document that lists grievances against the king instead of the political philosophy that most theorists and writers focus on. Then she erases the full historical contexts that aggrieved the founding fathers. In doing so, Smith pivots the oppressor from George III to these founding fathers, the racist political systems in the US throughout history, and the administration in power in 2017. “Declaration” rewrites the history of America’s foundational document to reframe it for in the 21st century. This reframing brings attention to people written out of history and demands better for their ancestors in the future.