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Life on Mars

by Tracy K. Smith
Life on Mars

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  • Synopses & Reviews
  • Award Excerpt

ISBN13: 9781555975845
ISBN10: 1555975844



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Awards

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

New poetry by the award-winning poet Tracy K. Smith, whose “lyric brilliance and political impulses never falter” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

You lie there kicking like a baby, waiting for God himself

To lift you past the rungs of your crib. What

Would your life say if it could talk? 

from No Fly Zone

With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to accompany the discoveries, failures, and oddities of human existence. In these brilliant new poems, Tracy K. Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark matter that keeps people both close and distant, and revisits the kitschy concepts like “love” and “illness” now relegated to the Museum of Obsolescence. These poems reveal the realities of life lived here, on the ground, where a daughter is imprisoned in the basement by her own father, where celebrities and pop stars walk among us, and where the poet herself loses her father, one of the engineers who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. With this remarkable third collection, Smith establishes herself among the best poets of her generation.

Review

"In Life on Mars, Smith shows herself to be a poet of extraordinary range and ambition. It's not easy to be so convincing in both the grand gesture and the reverent contemplation of a humble plate of eggs....As all the best poetry does, Life on Mars first sends us out into the magnificent chill of the imagination and then returns us to ourselves, both changed and consoled." The New York Times Book Review

Review

"[Life on Mars] is by turns intimate, even confessional, regarding private life in light of its potential extermination, and resoundingly political, warning of a future that 'isn't what it used to be,' the refuse of a party piled with 'postcards / And panties, bottles with lipstick on the rim.'" The New Yorker

Review

"The book's strange and beautiful first section pulses with America's adolescent crush on the impossible, on what waits beyond the edge of the universe....But what's most satisfying about [Life on Mars] is that after the grand space opera of Part 1, with its giddy name checks of 2001 and David Bowie, Ms. Smith shows us that she can play the minor keys, too. Her Martian metaphor firmly in place, she reveals unknowable terrains: birth and death and love." The New York Times

Review

"Hypnotic and brimming with irony, the poems in Smith's latest volume aren't so much about outer space as the interior life and the search for the divine....The spiritual motif running through these poems adds a stunning dimension that will please many readers." Library Journal

Review

"[Tracy K. Smith is] one of the finest poets writing right now." The Miami Herald

Review

"In Life on Mars, a vibrant collection of verse, Smith pays homage to David Bowie ('the Pope of Pop'), Stanley Kubric, the Hubble Telescope, JFK airport and more. It's a gripping, intergalactic ride that marvels at the miracles and malfunctions of our ever changing world. 'Like a wide wake, rippling/Infinitely into the distance, everything/That ever was still is, somewhere.'" More Magazine

Review

"[The poems] are smart, funny, and expertly crafted." San Francisco Chronicle, Best Poetry of 2011

Review

"A strong, surprising, and often beautiful book....Consistently surprising and demanding, Life on Mars gives materiality to Victor Martinez's statement that 'poetry is the essence of thinking.'" The Rumpus

Synopsis

Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize

* Poet Laureate of the United States *
* A New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice *
* A New Yorker, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year *

New poetry by the award-winning poet Tracy K. Smith, whose "lyric brilliance and political impulses never falter" (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

You lie there kicking like a baby, waiting for God himself
To lift you past the rungs of your crib. What
Would your life say if it could talk?
--from "No Fly Zone"


With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to accompany the discoveries, failures, and oddities of human existence. In these brilliant new poems, Tracy K. Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark matter that keeps people both close and distant, and revisits the kitschy concepts like "love" and "illness" now relegated to the Museum of Obsolescence. These poems reveal the realities of life lived here, on the ground, where a daughter is imprisoned in the basement by her own father, where celebrities and pop stars walk among us, and where the poet herself loses her father, one of the engineers who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. With this remarkable third collection, Smith establishes herself among the best poets of her generation.


About the Author

Tracy K. Smith is the author of two previous poetry collections: Duende, winner of the James Laughlin Award, and The Bodys Question, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

5 1

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 5 (1 comments)

`
Interesting Read , December 12, 2018
I rather liked how she had similar rhythms between a lot of her poems in this book. It may not be for everyone, but it suited me well. I'm not sure I understood often what she wrote about in her poems, but I did like the imagery that she used and how it related often to space. It was interesting how you often couldn't expect where the poem was headed when you read the beginning. Often it would end in a lot different place than what it seemed like. Her poems don't seem to be written for the audience. It's more of a personal expression and is written in a way that seems to denote introspective thought. She often talks about God and the universe in her poems, which I feel isn't as often done now days, so I thought that was intriguing. I'm glad that she was willing to include her beliefs about sensitive subjects within her poems. It made them more relatable even if I couldn't understand the whole message of the poem. I wonder if her poems were as much about the rhythm and how the words sounded as they were about something concrete. She often contrasts between the large universe and small things such as people and beads and other things, between the beauty of creation and less beautiful things such as crushed cans. She then uses questions to make people think about the differences she portrays. I like the juxtaposition and how she makes me try and think deeper about the meaning of the poem. It was rather refreshing to read.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9781555975845
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
05/10/2011
Publisher:
Graywolf Press
Pages:
88
Height:
9.08 in
Width:
153.92 mm
Thickness:
.50
Copyright Year:
2011
Author:
Tracy K. Smith
Author:
Tracy K.Smith
Subject:
Poetry-A to Z

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