Tracy Smith Behavior Machine Analysis

753 Words2 Pages

During the human life, people experience grief, however, people choose to cope with their grief in various ways. Many talks to a family member, sleep or allow themselves to be sad to relieve the pain. When Tracy K. Smith’s (U.S. poet laureate) father passed, she believed that therapy would help heal her heartache. Years after Smith’s therapy sessions, she wrote “Savior Machine.” She clarifies at a common read at Southeastern Louisiana University, that it is “a poem about feeling freed to look at my life in a clear-eyed way” (Smith). In portions of her poem she also explains how the sessions enhance her acceptance of her father’s death. “Savior Machine,” allows her readers to view the results of her therapy and it reveals that she receives more …show more content…

Where you itch at night. (14-17). While her therapist helps her with her father, the therapist unintentionally improves her relationship with her husband. At Southeastern Louisiana University’s common read, Smith explains, “I think I was able to meet him [her husband] because I cleared up a lot of silly stuff through therapy” (Smith). This confirmation allows the reader to receive a higher understanding of the effect therapy impacted Tracy K. Smith. As therapy helps Smith through her marriage and father’s death, it also helps her overall. However, Smith questions how another human being assistance helped her through this milestone with a positive outcome. In “Savior Machine” Smith notices her therapist walking one day and notes, “He looked like an ordinary man” (11). The thought of someone as equal to Smith, aiding her through the understanding of her father not being human amazes her. In the poem, Smith states, “The session was done./ But mostly what I see/ Is a human hand reaching down to lift/ A pebble from my tongue” (23-25). As the sessions end the death of her father and the questioning of her relationship has been lifted by her therapist, allowing the therapist to be the “Savior Machine” in Tracy K. Smith’s

Open Document