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Title details for Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith - Available

Life on Mars

Poems

by Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 12, 2017

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781681688985
      • File size: 39838 KB
      • Duration: 01:22:59

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Poet Laureate Tracy Smith narrates her 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of poetry, exploring reality and imagination in an expansive universe. She fills the space with purposeful pauses and slow, steady monotones that blend the metaphorical and the actual. There is not much fluctuation in her soft tone, which tends to evoke the feeling that everything is okay, although that isn't necessarily the case. Her pronunciation is sharp and clear. And she chooses to elongate certain words, conveying a yearning. She is a storyteller, especially when she talks about her father, a scientist. There is a sort of humble gratitude being offered to her father, who was an engineer who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 21, 2011
      Laughlin Awardâwinner Smith's third collection blends pop culture, history, elegy, anecdote, and sociopolitical commentary to illustrate the weirdness of contemporary living. The book's title, borrowed from a David Bowie song, hints at the recurrent use of science fiction and alternate realities (which turn out to mirror this one all too well) throughout the book. For Smith, life is laced with violence and a kind of dark humor, as in "The Museum of Obsolescence," where, "in the south wing, there's a small room/ Where a living man sits on display." In another poem, laughter "skids across the floor/ Like beads yanked from some girl's throat." Poems set on space shuttles or in alternate realities manage to speak about an eerily familiar present; the title poem, which includes everything from "dark matter" and "a father.../ who kept his daughter/ Locked in a cell for decades" to Abu Ghraib is proof that life is far stranger and more haunting than fiction. "Who understands the world," Smith asks in these poems and sequences, "and when/ Will he make it make sense? Or she?"

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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