This is Jenn Delperdang, with the Sioux City Public Library, and you’re listening to Check It Out.
It is my pleasure today to recommend one of the 2026 Adult Summer Reading selections for the Sioux City Public Library, Fear Less; poetry in perilous times by Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Tracy K Smith.
Weighing in at just 150 pages, this book is six short and powerful chapters filled with insight into the art form of poetry. Thematically, the chapters making up this book are built around poetry’s capacity to call to a reader’s empathy and curiosity, and to mitigate the hindrance of fear. She grounds readers in the technical elements of the craft and provides close readings of the works of contemporary poets, alongside classic poems. This is a book for seasoned poetry readers and newcomers alike.
Tracy K Smith asserts that much of the anxiety surrounding the art form of poetry seems to stem from the worry that there exists an authorized way in which a poem ought to be read, and that to set out without such a code of conduct is to be doomed from the start. She shares that one of her hopes in writing this book is to help put such a notion to rest. In the author’s own words, “Poetry is one of the greatest tools we have to wield our own attention—to consider our own lives and the lives of others, to help us live creatively and compassionately, to use that attention to lean into wonder, and joy, and truth, and to find hope—to keep hoping.”
Check out Fear Less: poetry in perilous times by Tracy K Smith at the Sioux City Public Library.
Support for Check It Out on Siouxland Public Media comes from Avery Brothers.
