"I love being in borrowed houses. I love being a bit out of my context. I miss my context dreadfully, but I'm excited by that."

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I know that in a poem, even when the speaker is speaking from the poet's experience, there's always something that's borrowed, some authority that sits outside of the poet that the poem has claimed. There's a dramatic pitch that makes the speaker capable of saying something more courageous or stranger or simply other than what the poet would be able to say.

— Tracy K. Smith