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

life again.
The death of a loved one can be a traumatizing event for anyone to endure and move past.

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/

until
one becomes home/ Moments sweep past. The grass bends/ then learns again to stand (3­8).
After her father died, Smith felt as if she was lost. Smith went throughout life trying to understand her place in the world along with many others searching for the same answers. It was not until Smith found her place in life and allowed time to pass that she learned to live again without her father.
Universally, mourning the death of a loved one can be considered one of the most vulnerable and uncomfortable parts of a person’s life because there is no correct way to grieve.

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

with the help of her therapist. The Pulitzer Prize­winning author asserted, “But mostly what I see/ Is a human hand reaching down to lift/ A pebble from my tongue” (23­25). After talking to her therapist, Smith was freed from the deep depression she had been enduring. During the Life on Mars Common Read, Tracy K. Smith elaborated on her poem “Savior Machine.” The poet explained an old folktale about a maiden being cursed and trapped without the ability to speak due to a witch putting a pebble on her tongue. Yet, all the young girl needed was for one person to remove the pebble from her tongue in order for her to be free (Smith). Smith sees her therapist as the person that freed her by allowing her to just speak about her life. When discussing her poem “Savior Machine,” the writer insisted “It’s a poem about therapy. It’s a poem about feeling freed to look at my life in a clear­eyed way. It’s a poem about meeting my husband... Who I think I was able to meet because I cleared up a bunch of silly stuff” (Smith). Initially, Smith was so broken from the array of issues she had been dealing with in life at the time that she could not even look into a mirror, but after her therapy sessions, she was able to work past her problems, learn to be herself again, and see her future in life more clearly.

Ultimately, Tracy K. Smith had a plethora of miscellaneous obstacles she had been facing and the death of her father just made life even more devastating in eyes. By attending therapy Smith was able to learn that she heals from sharing her feelings and experiences. The author actually considers her therapist to be the person that freed her from her hardship and allowed her to find herself again. Much like her later therapy sessions, throughout her poems, Tracy K. Smith shares her secret message explaining her transition from being lost without her father and broken from other issues piling into her life into a newly liberated woman that is strong, grounded, and whole again.