Life On Mars By Tracy K. Smith Analysis

“Life on Mars” is a very sentimental and intimate book of poems about how an author deals a lost in her life. Dan Chiasson from The New Yorker states, “Smiths own poetic focus, though polished, like the lenses of the Hubble, ‘to an impossible strength,’ is often directed to the here and now: the book 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 book of poems that this analysis will be coming from is titled “Life on Mars” by Tracy K. Smith. The poems presented are mostly about how Smith deals with the death of her father. This message is not clear throughout the poems which causes one to have to carefully analyze each poem to get an understanding of what is going on.
The three poems that was chosen to analyze is “It & Co”, “My God, It’s Full of Stars”, and “The Largeness We Can’t See”. “It & Co” was basically explaining that whatever someone is going through they are not going through it by themselves. In other words, her father died but she knows she cannot be sad or feel like she is the only one going through this because it is a common thing that happens. “We are a part of it. Not guests. Is It us, or what contains us?” In this poem she also expresses how she finds peace with the death of her father. Finding peace with her the death of her father was the same scenario for the poem “My God,
A near rhyme scheme is when the sounds are similar, but not exact. An example of that would be laughter and gathers or feeds and leaves. This poem also has assonance represented in it. Assonance us the close juxtaposition of the same or similar sounds, but with different end consonants in a line. Assonance was represented in lines 9 and 11 with the words guilt and sills. They were used to help put emphasis on each word. The sound effects add more imagery to this