Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark. 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. Would your life say if it could talk 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. 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. Smith is the Poet Laureate of the United States, and author of three acclaimed books of poetry: The Body's Question, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize Duende, winner of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets and an Essence Literary Award and, most recently, Life on Mars, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize, a New York Times Notable Book, a New York Times Book. Laughlin Award%E2%80%93winner Smith's third collection blends pop culture, history, elegy, anecdote, and sociopolitical commentary to illustrate the weirdness of contemporary living.

Life on mars poetry