''Life on Mars'' is a

poetry collection A poetry collection is often a compilation of several Poetry, poems by one poet to be published in a single Volume (bibliography), volume or chapbook. A collection can include any number of poems, ranging from a few (e.g. the four long poems in ...

Tracy K. Smith Tracy K. Smith (born April 16, 1972) is an American poet and educator. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. She has published four collections of poetry, winning the Pulitzer Prize for her 2011 volume ''Life ...

for which she won the 2012

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

. The collection is an

elegy An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...

for her father, a scientist who worked on the

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versa ...

Publication

Smith published the 88-page collection with

Graywolf Press Graywolf Press is an Independent publisher, independent, non-profit publishing, publisher located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf Press publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Graywolf Press collaborates with organizations such as the Co ...

in 2011.

Content

Writing in ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', Troy Jollimore advised readers "had better be prepared to face some stark metaphysical questions...An awareness of death permeates ''Life on Mars''." In ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'',

Dan Chiasson Dan Chiasson (; born May 9, 1971 in Burlington, Vermont) is an American poet, critic, and journalist. The ''Sewanee Review'' called Chiasson "the country’s most visible poet-critic." He is the Lorraine C. Wang Professor of English Literature at ...

described ''Life on Mars'' as "Smith’s wild, far-ranging elegy" for her father who died in 2008. Her father had been a scientist who worked on the

and "Smith cannot think about imwithout thinking in galactic dimensions, which, paradoxically, minimize him: drawn to that scale, individual lives (even his) can seem puny, and private traumas (even hers) inconsequential." Chiasson also points to the Martian reference's callback to the culture of the 1950s. "The issues of power and paternalism suggest the deep ways in which this is a book about race. Smith’s deadpan title is itself racially freighted: we can’t think about one set of fifties images, of Martians and sci-fi comics, without conjuring another, of black kids in the segregated South."

Reception

Reviewing the collection for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'',

Joel Brouwer Joel Brouwer (born 1968) is an American poet, professor and critic. His most recent poetry collection is ''Off Message'' released in 2016 He is also the author of ''Exactly What Happened,'' which received the Larry Levis Prize from Virginia Comm ...

said ''Life on Mars'' shows Smith "to be a poet of extraordinary range and ambition...and the early successes of this collection far outweigh its later missteps. 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." Jollimore praised the poem "My God, It’s Full of Stars" as "particularly strong, making use of images from science and science fiction to articulate human desire and grief." ''Life on Mars'' was named to ''The New York Times'' list of "100 Notable Books of 2011."

Awards

* 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, with the citation reading: "A collection of bold, skillful poems, taking readers into the universe and moving them to an authentic mix of joy and pain."

References

External links

''Life on Mars'' at Graywolf Press
{{authority control 2011 poetry books American poetry collections Pulitzer Prize for Poetry-winning works African-American literature Graywolf Press books