Book Review: Life on Mars by Tracy K Smith. Tracy K Smith’s work manages to toe the line perfectly between a commonplace modernism and a fanciful classicism. Despite these links, Life on Mars is no easy pop song, even when it presents its lightest form, as in the Villanelle “Solstice”.“Solstice” takes a series of modern happenings including the gassing of geese outside of JFK airport, Iranian bloodshed, and the shrinking of newspapers. While the lines are simple – almost a recount, the effect is explosive, forcing us to think about the sound- bite nature of our reporting and the matter of fact way we absorb, accept, and acclimatise ourselves to horror: “We’ve learned to back away from all we say. Smith’s Life on Mars for the Rumpus. Club Interviews Tracy K. Smith; September in the Rumpus Book Club; One Response to “Why I Chose Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars for the Rumpus Poetry Book Club. FOREWORD REVIEW POETRY Life on Mars Tracy K. Smith Graywolf Press (May 2011) Softcover $15.00 (88pp) 978-1-55597-584-5 It is as alien as one might suppose, Life On Mars, and yet there are familiarities—David Bowie, head. Smith won the Pulitzer Prize for her book of poems. American Life in Poetry: Column 442. Life on Mars, Graywolf Press. Book summary and reviews of Life on Mars by Tracy K. Join; Gift; Member Login; Library Login; Home; The. Book summary and reviews of Life on Mars by Tracy K. Life on Mars has 2,412 ratings and 239 reviews. Would your life say if it could talk? In the case of buying Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars. And, more or less, agree with what we should. Whole Flocks are being gassed near JFK.”(4. The book is divided into four parts. A chorus of engines chruns. Silence taunts: a dare. Everything that disappears Disappears as if returning somewhere.”(2. The second section is primarily an lengthy elegy sequence titled “The Speed of Belief”, written for Smith’s father. Each page of the elegy has a slightly different structure, charting life and death with co- mingled grief, longing, exhilaration, and questioning. In this ibeautiful sequence, Smith converts her personal experience to a universal one — reminding us of what we’ve all lost, where we all sit, and what’s around each corner. The final poem, “It’s Not”, forms a perfect conclusion – a kind of acceptance mingled with philosophy – life and death forming an natural progression or changing of form: “Legs slicing away at the waves, gliding Further into what life itself denies? He is only gone so far as we can tell. Though When I try, I see the white cloud of his hair In the distance like an eternity.” (3. The third section is inspired by anger, full of humanity’s great failings: the wrongs we’ve done to one another, the damage we’re doing to the Earth, the flaws we can’t seem to move beyond. The most intense of these is “They May Love All That He Has Chosen and Hate All That He Has Rejected”. The poem opens with anger, the distilled hatred of white supremacy. The poem could continue to grow the anger — there’s plenty to inspire it, but Smith controls the work beautifully, moving from the general: “Hate spreads itself out thin and skims the surface,” to particular killings conducted by white supremacists in 2. Smith moves the work away from that anger though, presenting compassion instead. In a masterful twist, Smith allows the dead to speak, and forgive, allowing those that destroyed with their hatred, a tiny crumb of love. The final section of the book comes back to domesticity: noisy neighbours – shrieking through the floorboards (“Screaming like the Dawn of Man, as if something/They have no name for has begun to insist/Upon being born”), a relationship in stasis, walking the dog, earning a living, coming to grips with romantic love, and above all, the art of creativity, as in “Alternate Take”, the wonderful poem for Levon Helm: “Six lines were bothered by skitters off like water in hot grease. Come in, Levon, with your lips stretched tight and that pig- eyed grin, Bass mallet socking it to the drum. Lay it down like you know” (6. Even at its most bleak, the work is shot through with humour and compassion. Even at its most obscure, the poems are rooted in the present tense; grounded by the everyday experience of observation. Life on Mars’ rich tapestry traverses a broad spectrum of modern experience, linking pop- culture to science and the geography of human pain, forgiveness and transcendence.
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