Section two of the book focuses solely on the poet’s experiences following the death of her father. “Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?” is the second long form piece in the book, tackling issues of loss and alienation while simultaneously paying tribute to David Bowie. “The Museum of Obsolescence” and “At Some Point, They’ll Want to Know What It Was Like” focus on how people living in what used to be considered the future will look back on and attempt to understand or explain the past. The poem “Sci-Fi” describes the poet’s predictions for the future while “My God, It’s Full of Stars” and “The Universe is a House Party” explore the expansiveness and chaos of space and time.

Life on Mars begins with a series of poems in section one that focus on visions of the future and meditations on outer space and the universe. And I hope that the poems give readers the opportunity to think about private and public events in different ways, even just briefly.The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Smith, Tracy K. : What do you hope readers of the book take away from it? The question moves, whereas our sense of what an answer is can often be static, a stopping point. Well, I don't think I'm prescribing any course of action for others, but I personally believe that sometimes the questions can be more productve than the answers they might lead to. A question is a pursuit, an invitation to envision and explore a series of possibilities, to struggle and empathize and doubt and believe. : The book also seems to suggest that accepting the mysteries that surround us can sometimes be a better course of action than always striving for answers. Of course, the book is also concerned with the dark aspects of being human, the inverse of that large wonder. Sometimes those answers set beautiful things into motion: compassion, hope, a desire to create something that will last. I think humans have always felt watched back by whatever is out there flickering in the distance. What excites me is what the imagination creates not simply in explanation of what is there, but also to explain or justify the feeling of awe and attachment that the heavens inspire. Can space - its vastness and mysteries - help ground us here on Earth ? : In some of these poems, the narrator seems to seek perspective, or relief, by gazing at the heavens.

The nearest galaxies-the larger, brighter, well-defined spirals and ellipticals-thrived about 1 billion years ago, when the cosmos was 13 billion years old. The smallest, reddest galaxies, about 100, may be among the most distant known, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old. The snapshot includes galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes, and colors. This view of nearly 10,000 galaxies is called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith