Stunning Collection

Sci-fi meets current events meets personal tragedy and triumph in poems I'll want to read again and again. It's wonderful, also, to go online and listen to Tracy K. Smith read her work. ( )

The title of this collection, Life on Mars seems almost tongue-in-cheek as the collection is VERY much about life here on earth, in a very visceral, beautiful, and sometimes intensely difficult, way. Poems like "Everything That Ever Was" manage to dance with the universe without overly lofty ambition, keeping our feet on the ground. "The Universe as Primal Scream" marries biblical storytelling with the everyday tedium of our existence. Occasionally Smith packs a huge punch with just a few words (your mileage will vary, based on personal experiences). When I read, "Tonight, I'm at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I don't know where I end" ("They May Love All That He Has Chosen and Hate All That He Has Rejected"), I was transported to that exact state of being. Prior to reading the collection I had been at an event where Tracy K. Smith spoke about her father, and many of the poems in this collection revealed much about that relationship--in particular the one dedicated to his memory, "The Speed of Belief".

At that same event, Smith said, "When you read a poem you become humble." In humility there is great wisdom and beauty and it is woven throughout this wonderful collection. ( )

I'm fairly new to the world of poetry, and this Pulitzer prize-winning book came highly recommended. Tracy K. Smith's poems are challenging in what they convey, at least they were at the beginning. My first self-taught lesson of poetry was to stop trying so hard to understand and just let go. By simply focusing on the words, perhaps trying to encapsulate them by how they sounded aloud, I started to arrive at some version of understanding. It was hard to know for sure because it was never blindingly obvious, and certainly never the same each time, but it felt right and realizing that also felt fight. I can foresee this being an ongoing introspective pursuit.

In one of my favorite movies, "Contact" starring Jodie Foster, there's a line near the end of the movie where her character, while staring at a never-before-seen celestial event, says, "I have no words to describe it. They should've sent a poet." I like to imagine Tracy K. Smith's "Life on Mars" is an answer to that call. ( )

This book is really unbelievable.

Smith's poetry is so approachable yet deep that it is easy to see why she was a poet laureate. ( )