The Body's Question

The debut collection by the Poet Laureate of the United States

* Winner of the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize *

You are pure appetite. I am pure

Appetite. You are a phantom

In that far-off city where daylight

Climbs cathedral walls, stone by stolen stone.

—from "Self-Portrait as the Letter Y"

The Body's Question by Tracy K. Smith received the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by…