If your brain is anything like my brain then the part of your brain reserved for thinking about outer space is a mess. It’s probably cluttered with things like the moon landing footage, pics from Curiosity, clips from
Farscape, the cover of The Little Prince, that Smashing Pumpkins music video, and so on. On top of all that, looking up at a sky full of stars prompts all of the big questions: Why are we here? Why is everything in the
universe moving away from everything else at a constantly increasing pace?
And why won’t astronomers acknowledge Pluto as a planet when I know it’s
one in my heart?
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith doesn’t have answers. She
doesn’t try to reconcile the messes in our heads. In Life on Mars she celebrates our confusing, question-riddled relationship with the universe.
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