Life on Mars: Poems

By Nicholas J. Karolides

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555975844
• ISBN13: 9781555975845
• Release Date: May 2011
• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.8" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

one of my favorite collections of poetry <3

if you like space and you like poetry this is well worth it!!

the greatest collection I have ever read

I have been a consumer of numerous bouts of poetry in my time, and I can say in full confidence that Tracy K. Smith is one of the most talented poets of our time. Her flawless weaving of the questions of time and space and normal, everyday lifestyles of human beings makes this work feel real, earthly, yet touched by something ethereal. She even manages to address the Black Lives Matter movement in these pages. Tracy K. Smith...