“Declaration” is a reflexive poem wherein Tracy K. Smith thinks about the identity of America, the ideals of America, and the disconnect between the two. Based on the implications about the language of the Declaration of Independence, this poem investigates what freedom, equality, and democracy are when examined in the context of reality.
There shines a tension, a movement, a play between the public language of patriotism and the private language of consciousness here, a movement from one perspective or language to another, a crosscutting of perspectives or languages, and a sense of needing or wanting two perspectives at once, two languages simultaneously.
Smith writes, for example, of liberty, of unity, of justice—not necessarily ideological notions with her, but rather ideas she echoes and plays with because she knows them imperfectly, incompletely, because she suspects them, because she wants them otherwise, because she wants them to be better, because she wants them not at all. The speaker here thinks about how stories are smoothed out, how stories of violence
One of the key conflicts in the poem revolves around the elements of words and deeds. Smith argues that words have the ability to inspire hope but can also serve as illusions that preach the message of equality behind the screen of injustice. This is the message that the mere act of saying is not the act of doing. Words have to be constantly validated.
Nonetheless, the attitude of the poem is more contemplative than accusatory. Smith does not refute the ideals in the beginning; instead, she questions these ideals and asks how one could live up to these ideals. In other words, the poem changes into an ethical inquiry in which the author urges the reader to change the national stories that are passed along.
Ultimately, then, “Declaration” subverts patriotism from a blind loyalty to a critical assessment. Smith uses the poem itself as a form of counter-declaration that calls for honesty, memory, and a moral sensibility of freedom. It points out a gap between promise and performance by encouraging readers to think of a different promise of freedom.
