Free Ebook Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith
Be the initial to download this publication Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith and let reviewed by surface. It is very easy to review this publication Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith since you don't should bring this printed Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith everywhere. Your soft file publication could be in our gadget or computer system so you could delight in checking out everywhere and every single time if required. This is why whole lots numbers of people also review guides Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith in soft fie by downloading and install the e-book. So, be just one of them that take all benefits of checking out guide Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith by online or on your soft data system.
Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith
Free Ebook Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith
Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith. It is the time to improve and also refresh your ability, expertise and encounter consisted of some home entertainment for you after long period of time with monotone things. Working in the office, going to research, learning from exam and more activities may be finished and you have to start brand-new things. If you really feel so worn down, why don't you try brand-new point? A very easy point? Reviewing Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith is exactly what our company offer to you will certainly recognize. As well as the book with the title Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith is the recommendation now.
Checking out behavior will certainly always lead people not to satisfied reading Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith, a book, 10 book, hundreds e-books, and also more. One that will certainly make them really feel completely satisfied is completing reading this book Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith and also getting the notification of the e-books, after that discovering the various other next book to check out. It continues an increasing number of. The moment to complete reviewing an e-book Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith will certainly be always numerous depending on spar time to invest; one example is this Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith
Now, exactly how do you know where to acquire this book Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith Don't bother, now you might not go to the e-book establishment under the bright sun or evening to browse guide Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith We right here consistently assist you to find hundreds type of book. Among them is this publication qualified Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith You might go to the link page supplied in this collection and afterwards opt for downloading and install. It will certainly not take even more times. Just link to your website accessibility and you could access guide Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith online. Of course, after downloading Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith, you could not print it.
You can save the soft file of this book Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith It will depend upon your extra time and also tasks to open up and read this e-book Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith soft file. So, you could not hesitate to bring this publication Life On Mars: Poems, By Tracy K. Smith almost everywhere you go. Simply include this sot data to your kitchen appliance or computer system disk to permit you review whenever as well as everywhere you have time.
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize
* 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.
- Sales Rank: #36277 in Books
- Published on: 2011-05-10
- Released on: 2011-05-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.95" h x .27" w x 6.01" l, .31 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 88 pages
Review
“In Life on Mars, Smith shows herself to be a poet of extraordinary range and ambition. It's not easy to be so convincing in both the grand gesture and the reverent contemplation of a humble plate of eggs. . . . As all the best poetry does, Life on Mars first sends us out into the magnificent chill of the imagination and then returns us to ourselves, both changed and consoled.” ―Joel Brouwer, The New York Times Book Review
“[Life on Mars] is by turns intimate, even confessional, regarding private life in light of its potential extermination, and resoundingly political, warning of a future that 'isn't what it used to be,' the refuse of a party piled with 'postcards / And panties, bottles with lipstick on the rim.' ” ―Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker
“The book's strange and beautiful first section pulses with America's adolescent crush on the impossible, on what waits beyond the edge of the universe. . . . But what's most satisfying about [Life on Mars] is that after the grand space opera of Part 1, with its giddy name checks of 2001 and David Bowie, Ms. Smith shows us that she can play the minor keys, too. Her Martian metaphor firmly in place, she reveals unknowable terrains: birth and death and love.” ―Dana Jennings, The New York Times
“[Life on Mars] blends pop culture, history, elegy, anecdote, and sociopolitical commentary to illustrate the weirdness of contemporary living. . . . 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.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Hypnotic and brimming with irony, the poems in Smith's latest volume aren't so much about outer space as the interior life and the search for the divine. . . . The spiritual motif running through these poems adds a stunning dimension that will please many readers.” ―Library Journal
“[Tracy K. Smith is] one of the finest poets writing right now.” ―Gabrielle Calvocoressi, The Miami Herald
“In Life on Mars, a vibrant collection of verse, Smith pays homage to David Bowie ('the Pope of Pop'), Stanley Kubric, the Hubble Telescope, JFK airport and more. It's a gripping, intergalactic ride that marvels at the miracles and malfunctions of our ever changing world. 'Like a wide wake, rippling/Infinitely into the distance, everything/That ever was still is, somewhere.'” ―More Magazine
“[The poems] are smart, funny, and expertly crafted.” ―San Francisco Chronicle, Best Poetry of 2011
“A strong, surprising, and often beautiful book. . . . Consistently surprising and demanding, Life on Mars gives materiality to Victor Martinez's statement that 'poetry is the essence of thinking.' ” ―Sean Singer, The Rumpus
About the Author
Tracy K. Smith is the author of two previous poetry collections: Duende, winner of the James Laughlin Award, and The Body's Question, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Most helpful customer reviews
72 of 75 people found the following review helpful.
Sometimes the most profound space travel is in our interior space.
By Rob Jacques
"Life on Mars" is a collection of 33 poems touching on most aspects of 21st Century American hope and belief. Make no mistake about it: life on Mars is life on Earth, and readers will recognize the ironies (sometimes quite bitter) between our culture's surface appearances we so like to show others and the realities of deep scars and wounds we try to hide even from ourselves. The poem that gives the collection its title is a beautifully crafted work that discusses the "dark matter" existing between us that we don't (won't?) recognize and that might be responsible for wreaking havoc in our personal lives. It's a chilling indictment of us all that uses actual recent events in our country to make us hope and pray that it's dark matter causing our incest, intolerance, ignorance and destruction. An earlier generation would've said "The devil made me do it," but ours tries to lay the blame on natural phenomena. The poem packs a punch - deftly though, and artistically. I swear it must have taken Smith many revisions and months to get it right, choosing just the right image, the right words, the right inflections and line meter to achieve such success.
The poem "Life on Mars" is followed by a shorter gem: "Solstice." Here, Smith addresses the killing of Canada geese at JFK airport, the killing of people, and the public's dwindling interest in the news. What's remarkable is Smith chose the format of a villanelle to tell the tale - a poetic form that uses rhyme, repetition and meter to create a mystical atmosphere. In this case, the villanelle greatly heightens a feeling of helplessness and loss, and we pray that the solstice of our culture has been reached and that light will soon begin to return.
The poem that provides the biggest kick in the book, however, is the monumental elegy, "The Speed of Belief." It contains some great lines and images, and walks us through a daughter's coping with the loss of her father. I say "coping" and not "grieving," because the daughter tries to imagine her father's death as part of a continuum, not an ending, and the poem builds through seven magnificently crafted sections to a powerful, wonderful conclusion that will leave the reader satisfied and saying, "Yes! Yes!" And one striking image from the poem will stay with me for a very long time, her father standing in the heavens, and "Night kneels at your feet like a gypsy glistening with jewels." This poem alone is worth the price of the book!
Great lines abound in this collection. For example, take this image from "The Good Life": a poor person " . . . walking to work on payday / like a woman journeying for water / from a village without a well."
These are poems that unflinchingly capture the human condition today, but they do so with great beauty . . . and a touch of solace.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
An interesting drunk buy, would do it again sober!
By Sebastian Schultz
I have a tendency of buying things on my wishlist when I'm intoxicated, and this just so happened to be one of those. I'm extremely pleased with this purchase. Tracy K. Smith's poems are grand, sometimes grand enough to give me chills. This is definitely a poetic endeavor that has landed among the stars.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Great poetry for poetry and science lovers
By R.
This was one of the books assigned to me for a poetry class in college. It is one of maybe two assigned books that I kept after graduating. I have always loved poetry, but this collection really stood out to me. Like Tracy K. Smith and her father, my family also bonds over science and science fiction, so I found myself relating very well to her poems about her father. I think this collection does require some knowledge about science because it has so many allusions to it. Some people in the class, for instance, had trouble understanding the poem "The Challenger" because they weren't familiar with that event in scientific history. This might be why some of the lower reviews say things like "I just didn't get it". If you like science and poetry, though, this is fantastic.
See all 35 customer reviews...
Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith PDF
Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith EPub
Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith Doc
Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith iBooks
Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith rtf
Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith Mobipocket
Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith Kindle
Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith PDF
Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith PDF
Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith PDF
Life on Mars: Poems, by Tracy K. Smith PDF
![Small Business in a Global Economy [2 volumes]: Creating and Managing Successful OrganizationsFrom Praeger](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uznTCBLIc0FVeEQWL3nJBCdCflWUTbxQk1swj_JWxqfSfNM6WJ8Ac0RyY4fdAt8t7sKJkUPIbREeItmOASXazuAkH6MhdCo4JfBlx6VBKxk54JnprCWjWD=s0-d "Small Business in a Global Economy [2 volumes]: Creating and Managing Successful OrganizationsFrom Praeger")
![Small Business in a Global Economy [2 volumes]: Creating and Managing Successful OrganizationsFrom Praeger](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_s2lXWnkGh5CAcHDi4_hhqhbyJD0iXnocGL_ncBg7vqHjGqjEk61Hdn5yo1d7L9PaHZIouCXUCObvy4EaqueJOwpdhFrg=s0-d "Small Business in a Global Economy [2 volumes]: Creating and Managing Successful OrganizationsFrom Praeger")
