Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Tracy K. Smith?s “Duende” is a mesmerizing exploration of desire, loss, and the ineffable force that animates artistic expression. Drawing from the flamenco tradition and the concept of "duende," a term popularized by Federico García Lorca to describe a soul-stirring artistic presence rooted in authenticity and emotional depth, Smith creates a layered, evocative meditation on the intersections of art, identity, and existence.

The poem unfolds in three sections, each delving into different dimensions of duende. In the first section, Smith introduces a vivid tableau of the performers whose art emerges from longing and necessity. The opening lines, “The earth is dry and they live wanting,” immediately situate the reader in a landscape of scarcity and yearning. This hunger is not merely physical but spiritual, a “small reservoir of furious music” that resides “heavy in the throat.” The performers transform this inner turmoil into art, coaxing “the night into being” through the visceral act of dance. The “skirt shimmering with sequins and lies” suggests both the artifice and the raw honesty inherent in performance—the simultaneous creation and concealment of truth.

Smith?s language is musical and physical, capturing the rhythm and impact of flamenco. The dancers “defy gravity to feel tugged back,” embodying a tension between flight and rootedness, transcendence and corporeality. The repeated phrase about braiding hair—“I’ll put a long braid in my hair / And write your name there”—blends the personal and the ritualistic, weaving identity and devotion into a shared narrative of yearning.

In the second section, the focus expands to encompass the communal and historical dimensions of duende. The “ramshackle family” and “bailaor” represent a lineage of art born from struggle, with the dancers? heels marking time “like a tin river.” This image captures the paradox of movement that remains fixed, of art as both ephemeral and enduring. The performers’ gestures—“the ones who dance / As though they’re burying / Memory—one last time— / Beneath them”—suggest a cathartic confrontation with the past, a simultaneous exorcism and preservation of pain.

Smith acknowledges the audacity of her own engagement with this tradition, writing, “And I hate to do it here. / To set myself heavily beside them.” This self-awareness highlights the tension between the authenticity of lived experience and the poet’s role as an observer or interpreter. Smith wrestles with the inadequacy of language to capture the intensity of duende, confessing that if she attempts to name or grasp it, “It lies still and the music thins.” Yet, when she “leans unbuttoned into the blow of loss,” she is carried into an ecstatic realm where pain and beauty converge. The imagery of “chords that stretch and bend / Like light through colored glass” evokes a transcendent interplay of fragmentation and unity, as the boundaries between the self and the world dissolve.

The third section distills the poem’s themes into stark, elemental terms: “There is always a road, / The sea, dark hair, dolor.” These recurring motifs symbolize the eternal nature of longing and the inevitability of separation. The closing lines—“They say you’re leaving Monday / Why can’t you leave on Tuesday?”—encapsulate the human desire to delay loss, to bargain with time and hold onto connection for just a little longer. This plaintive question, simple yet profound, resonates as a universal expression of grief and love.

“Duende” is both an homage to the flamenco tradition and a broader meditation on the forces that drive creativity. Smith captures the way art emerges from the interplay of joy and sorrow, presence and absence. The poem’s rhythm and imagery evoke the intensity of flamenco while also transcending its cultural specificity to speak to the universal human condition. In its exploration of duende, Smith’s poem becomes an embodiment of the very concept it seeks to describe—a work that stirs the soul and lingers in the reader?s mind like the echo of music in a silent room.

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