Life on Mars
by
Tracy K. Smith
How
do I even begin to tell you how wonderful Life
on Mars
is? Tracy K. Smith's poetry fills me with peace and such fullness,
even when she writes about how inhuman we can be. Her poems are
almost meditative — I really enjoyed slowing down and focusing on
her words, their rhythm, and the overall picture of the poem before
me. Part space opera, part elegy, part wartime commentary, Life
on Mars exceedingly
deserves the Pulitzer it received, won on Smith's birthday, no less.
Forgive me if I quote too much.
3.
Perhaps
the great error is believing we're alone,
That
others have come and gone — a momentary blip —
When
all along, space might be choc-full of traffic,
Bursting
at the seams with energy we neither feel
Nor
see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding,
Setting
solid feet down on planets everywhere,
Bowing
to the great stars that command, pitching stones
At
whatever are their moons. They live wondering
If
they are the only ones, knowing only the wish to know,
And
the great black distance they — we — flicker in.
Maybe
the dead know, their eyes widening at last,
Seeing
the high beams of a million galaxies flick on
At
twilight. Hearing the engines flare, the horns
Not
letting up, the frenzy of being. I want it to be
One
notch below bedlam, like a radio without a dial.
Wide
open, so everything floods in at once.
And
sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time,
Which
should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke.
So
that I might be sitting now beside my father
As
he raises a lit match to the bowl of his pipe
For
the first time in the winter of 1959.
- from "My God, It's Full of Stars"
Smith's
father, an engineer who helped build the Hubble Telescope, inspired
her love of space and of science fiction tales, and the book takes
its name from another tribute to possibility, David Bowie's "Life
on Mars." The book is divided into four sections: The first, all
the vastness and potential of the universe; the second, the fuzzy
line between life and death, between mourning and acceptance; the
third, when Earth becomes a nightmare, when Earth forgets what
humanity can do; and the fourth hovers dreamily between present and
memory. All have elements of beauty, of grace.
What
I also particularly loved about Smith's poems was that they did not
require major mental gymnastics to understand. That might sound like
either a diss or an admittance of limitation on my part, but what I
mean is that I don't think poetry has to be "difficult" to
be "literary." She wants to be as clear as the day they
fixed the lenses on the Hubble, unambiguous in the idea that it is
amazing that people have such a great capacity for both love and
violence, as though our views are Universally Important, when we are
mere specks of cosmic dust. Impressive specks, surely, but small
nonetheless. "Our time is brief," she writes. "We
dwindle by the day."
I.
I don't want to hear their voices.
To stand sucking my teeth while
they
Rant. For once, I don't want to
know
What they call truth, or what flags
Flicker from poles stuck to their
roofs.
Let them wait. Lead them to the
back porch
And let them lean there while the
others eat.
If they thirst, give them a bucket
and a tin cup.
If they're sick, tell them the
doctor's away,
That he doesn't treat their kind.
Warn them
What kind of trouble tends to crop
up
Around here after dark.
- from "They May Love All That He Has Chosen and Hate All That He Has Rejected"
Much
of the political content centers around the last Bush administration,
and while it is heartening to know that we are no longer under that
particular variety of governmental strain, it is disheartening
to see what is now happening domestically. Some days it feels like
we're pretending the fight against terrorism no longer exists, and that
we've conveniently shoved it into an invisible computer program —
always running, and little progress being made while soldiers
continue to die. Believe me, I'm glad that we've mostly moved beyond
the "Freedom Fries" stage, but in the absence of
Patriot Profiteering, those same people have moved onto rekindling
the war against anything that isn't a rich, white, straight man. The
same people who were fine with prisoner torture now want to redefine
rape and redefine a "person," and all manner of other
unsettling things. You don't need me to tell you — the news brings
another WTF-story or twelve every day.
All
this time, we've been a country — been a planet
— and this is how far we've come? No wonder we turn to the movies,
to television. No wonder we want The Doctor to show us the edges of
time, and we want the Battlestar fleet to survive. Captain Kirk
kisses green women with ease, and why not have a best friend who is a
7 foot tall Wookiee? For all our struggles, and for all the fictional
struggles we watch, at least we can temporarily remind ourselves:
"The human race will continue, despite this present
ridiculousness."
Yes,
I find peace in Tracy K. Smith's writing. Reading her words, I am at
once thinking of nothing else, yet everything
else. The radio dial is gone, and it's all flooding in. We can be so
much more.
(Full Disclosure: This book was sent to me by Graywolf Press at my request. I thank them for the gesture and I will continue to be fair with my reviews.)
#45
This review is part of Pajiba's Cannonball Read, in which participants aim to read and review 13, 26 or 52 books within one year.
(Full Disclosure: This book was sent to me by Graywolf Press at my request. I thank them for the gesture and I will continue to be fair with my reviews.)
#45
This review is part of Pajiba's Cannonball Read, in which participants aim to read and review 13, 26 or 52 books within one year.
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