Writing in alternating couplet and paragraph form, Smith's words are so deep that I felt as though I was also mourning a loved one. The first, The Speed of Belief, pays homage to Smith's late father. Three poems stood out in this collection. In poetry that is a mix of free verse, prose, letters, and songs, Smith delivers powerful words in a four part opus. Upon hearing that Tracy K Smith had been named the United States poet laureate for the next year, I decided to read her 2012 Pulitzer winning collection Life on Mars.
With this remarkable third collection, Smith establishes herself among the best poets of her generation.įor 2017 I have set a goal for myself to read a minimum of twenty Pulitzer winners across all platforms.
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. 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. 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. You lie there kicking like a baby, waiting for God himself
Smith, whose "lyric brilliance and political impulses never falter" ( Publishers Weekly, starred review) New poetry by the award-winning poet Tracy K. * A New Yorker, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * * A New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice *
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