May 2016 – Princeton Writes

2020-01-14T14:08:15-05:00

Am I Lying or Laying? As summer begins to reveal itself and temperatures climb, you may want to lay down your paperwork and lie out in the sun—wait! Is it lie or lay? When should you use which verb? Lie versus lay is one of those grammar issues many of us struggle with. The present and past tenses of each seem to overlap, so when in doubt, most people go with lay. That's not always the best choice. Growing up before anyone considered the daily use of sunscreen, my sisters and I spent our summers “laying out” in the sun. I [...]

Ordinary Light: A Memoir (2015) by Tracy K. Smith

Stephanie Whetstone2016-05-01T10:00:41-04:00

Critical Assessment "In 'Ordinary Light,' Smith writes as a daughter who has lost her mother and is thinking of her own daughter as she submits to the 'powerful nostalgia for the very years I was in the process of living, when the world of my family was the only heaven I needed to believe in.' Every line of her prose is well behaved. But ambition had been there all along: 'I wanted to write the kind of poetry that people read and remembered, that they lived by — the kinds of lines that I carried with me from moment to moment [...]

Am I Lying or Laying?

Ordinary Light: A Memoir (2015) by Tracy K. Smith

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