Tracy Smith Life On Mars Essay

Poetry is known as an avenue to express one’s true thoughts and feelings in disguise, almost like sharing a secret message. Tracy K. Smith, the author of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize­winning book, Life on Mars, uses her poetry as an avenue to share her feelings and life experiences. While, Smith does use other topics to inspire her writing throughout her book such as, the upcoming birth of her daughter and violence in the streets of America, Smith often alludes to periods in her life that involve coping with the death of her father. In poems such as, “Savior Machine” and “Us and Company,” Tracy K. Smith centers her writing around losing herself and her direction in life after her father’s death, but eventually finding her place and learning to live

Tracy K. Smith exposes that she is very familiar with the effects of grieving over a lost family member, as she uses her struggles with the death of her father as a muse in a number of her poems. In the poem “Us and Company,” Smith explains, “We are here for what amounts to a few hours, /a day at the most” (1­2). The poet is implying that a person can be here one day and gone the next, referencing to her father no longer being in her life. The writer then goes on to reveal the process of her coping with life without her father, Smith emphasizes:

We feel around making sense of the terrain, / our own limbs, / bumping up against a herd of bodies/

Although Smith explains her father death as one of her most significant tragedies, She also mentions how his death is important to her in a more positive way. While discussing the death of her mother, Smith assures, “It took losing my father to help me come to better grips with that first loss” (38). Tracy K. Smith views her father's death as a way to surpass her pain from her mother’s death. Yet, even after healing from her mother dying, Smith still continued to suffer from losing her father. In the poem “Savior Machine,” Smith admits “I spent two years not looking/ into the mirror in his office/ Talking, instead, into my hands? Or a pillow in my lap” (1­4). Smith was initially so disconnected with herself, as result of her father’s death, that she could not even look into a mirror while speaking. During the Common Read at Southeastern Louisiana University, the author revealed that after her father’s death she received years of therapy from a man that evidently saved her life by just allowing her to talk to him (Smith). By the poet revealing that she heals from sharing her feelings and experiences, she also gives her readers a greater understanding of her poetry. However, as time passed while Smith continued to attend her sessions the poet continued to blossom into a person she had been once before