Beautiful writing, but I wasn't emotionally invested.

I read this because it was longlisted and then shortlisted for the National Book Award in 2015. The author is best known for her poetry but I'm sorry to say I am not familiar with it. I would like to read some in the future.The first chapter, a prologue describing when her mother died, really drew me in. It was written so beautifully and captured the pain and confusion of those kinds of situations (her mother having died of cancer and suffering a very long death). I found myself wishing more of

No fireworks, but a very enjoyable memoir from our poet laureate about growing up the youngest of seven children in a loving family, coming into her adult identity as her mother, a woman of great faith and rectitude, is dying of cancer.

Tracy K. Smith is the current poet laureate of the United States. A product of a Harvard and Columbia education, Smith has won numerous accolades and awards for all three of her poetry collections. Life on Mars: Poems won the Pulitzer five years ago and it is by far the most ambitious poetry collection that I have read this year. Smith is well deserving of her position as poet laureate as her writing is exquisite. In addition to the poetry collections, Smith took on the ambitious task of penning...

On the rare occasions that I read memoir, it is usually the memoir of a writer. Not only are they better written, but I like learning when and how they felt the calling to write, what books shaped their world view, etc. I had read Smith’s Pulitzer-Prize winning poetry book, Life on Mars, so counted on a good read. Except for a brief prologue about her present life, we follow her through her early years, growing up in an African-American, Southern Baptist home in California, where most of her fri...

It truly saddens me to say I stopped reading this 50% of the way through, because Smith just seems like an unbelievably kind and sensitive person. But I was very, very, very bored by her memoir. I kept waiting for something to HAPPEN - some type of challenge or trial. In a memoir, the readers interest is held if the author went through something tough and shares what they learned with you. In the absence of something challenging happening, did they have some great insight about life? In the abse...

I became familiar with Tracy K. Smith from a poem I could not forget that I read over and over again that I discovered during a subway ride in New York. None of those poems tend to stay in my brain but what I loved about the way she uses language is that it is both simple and profound without being haughty or inaccessible. So I was delighted to read Ordinary Light, to find the same delicate honesty and light, lovely language rendered to something as profound and heavy as the loss of a mother. Th...

Despite being a memoir, Smith's poetry is present in every sentence. Lines so beautiful I sighed after reading them, ideas so true I teared up, and a life so beautifully examined I was speechless.

If I cannot go to the mountain, I will bring the mountain to me.

I was lucky enough to win a free copy of Ms. Smith's memoir through Goodreads First Reads program, and I'm very glad that I did. I became a fan of Smith's after reading her Pulitzer Prize winning poetry collection Life on Mars last year. That collection originally attracted me because of its Bowie-infused words, but soon proved that it was a powerful entity within itself, and stood on its own, as a testament to, and because of, Smith's incredible use and understanding of language, and the type o...

She is made out in body armor and knives, standing on the field of battle, she is ten-feet tall and twenty-yards away, is the physical representation of the memoir, a faded, gray figure, which is all it can be, forced remembrances, sideways truth and endlessly, almost breathtakingly boring and there it is in reality's time, the two foes engage in a pantomime of death dealing...our heroine victorious.Long Live Tracy K. Smith, Slayer of Memoirs, she has killed them completely, now and all future d...

First I would like to note that I won this book via a Goodreads Giveaway! Thanks guys!So, before I jump into the meat and potatoes of my review, I just want to say that Tracy K. Smith can write. Trust me, her books of poetry will be added to my to-read list; I've never been a huge fan of poetry, since it seems like most of it goes over my head, but I'm willing to branch out in this case.You know, if you asked me what I would have rated this book at 50, maybe even 100 pages in, I would have proba...

DNF at page 192. I put this down months ago and have no desire to pick it back up. I had very high hopes for this memoir. I expected to find something quite different than what this is. The writing wasn't nearly as beautiful as Smith's poetry (which is why I picked this up in the first place). I also was hoping race to be a main point of discussion in the memoir, but religion was discussed far more often, which I'm not interested in. I'll probably read more of Smith's poetry in the future, but I...

I rarely stop reading a book but I gave up on this memoir 1/3rd of the way through. I didn't find the memoir interesting. The first third was about Smith's childhood filled with childhood detail, relatives, and many references to religion. I understand Christianity is an important part of her parents life, but as a reader there was no value add for me. I understand Halloween could be a challenging event for her to participate in due to ghost costumes being similar to KKK, witchcraft, and superst...

I was interested in this book after reading so many of its positive (truly, gushing) reviews. So I'm somewhat surprised to say that I thought Ordinary Light was, well, just okay. There is no doubt that Smith can write. She is a wonderful storyteller, and I would argue that the more ordinary a moment, the more vividly and effectively she can describe it. Large chunks of this memoir are devoted to Smith's day-to-day observations of and interactions with her family while her mother is dying from ca...

I am coming to believe that poets are better memoir writers than straight memoir writers. You definitely have to digest this book as the prose is unpredictable, effortless and fluid. Smith takes seemingly mundane details and creates such vivid imagery evoking the experience for the reader of a complex emotional landscape that is not easily comprehended or embraced for the writer and for the reader as she writes of these very beautiful, poignant, and sometimes sorrowful events. I took this book o...

3.5 starsAbout midway through (poetry) Pulitzer Prize-winning Tracy K. Smith's touching memoir Ordinary Light I was starting to think I'd have to decline rating the book, fearing that my meh rating would reflect badly on Ms. Smith the person, or even her book. Generally when a memoirist writes, she's got enough life experiences to fill a book. All I got from the first half was an impeccably written book about a girl's very ordinary family (read: dull, Norman-Rockwell-as-filtered-through-the-Hux...

Awesome, this book is awesome. It's amazing how Smith is able to bring so much of her childhood and adolescence back to life; she really evokes what it's like to be her at that age. It reminded me of myself sometimes, the insecurities I used to have. The thing I liked about her writing was that she very rarely, or perhaps never, shamed herself: she always accepted her feelings as they were and stood by herself.I also really liked her straightforward musings on the role of faith/God, really reson...

Pulitzer prize-winning poet Smith delivers a thoughtful, meditative memoir of her childhood, up through her acceptance to graduate school at Columbia.Style-wise, this book is great for people who consider themselves introverts, because it mimics the patterns they often follow. A tiny thing happens, and Smith reflects on it at length. Most things she notices stay with her for a long time, and she connects them to other things that happen, then ruminates on THAT. It's the introspective person's dr...

I picked this up as I had a chance to meet the author and is always true with me, I liked it more after listening to her discuss it. I do not read a lot of memoir and I didn't want to read this story of her and her mother and her mother's death, but I am so glad I did. We would not seem to have much in common, but I lost my mother soon after I graduated from college as Tracy did and her descriptions of her feelings of loss and grief mirrored my own. She is a beautiful and eloquent writer and thi...