“ 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 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

It's not easy to be so convincing in both the grand gesture and the reverent contemplation of a humble plate of eggs. “In Life on Mars, Smith shows herself to be a poet of extraordinary range and ambition. With this remarkable third collection, Smith establishes herself among the best poets of her generation. 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. 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. 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. You lie there kicking like a baby, waiting for God himself

Smith, whose 'lyric brilliance and political impulses never falter' ( Publishers Weekly, starred review) New poetry by the award-winning poet Tracy K. * A New Yorker, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * * A New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice *

Life on mars poetry