I love the honest picture that this poem paints. It’s not a new concept, but something we don’t talk about a lot. It’s the same thing that happened after the WTC, after Princess Diana. It’s a concept I’ve just written about and is currently going on in North Korea as mourners buy “souvenirs” to remember Kim Jong Il. Venders are selling history, or trying to make money off of it. The man as an exhibit that can answer any questions but is ignored, or laughed at. What absolutely floors me about this poem is the idea of a museum dedicated to humanly foibles (for lack of a better term). Outside, venders hawk t-shirts, three for eight. Is an image of the old planet taken from space. (After a mirror–someone’s idea of a joke?)//

Was up for a season, followed by “Illness,”//Ĭoncepts difficult to grasp. Laugh, he’ll lower his head to his hands//Īnd sigh. Ask,//Īnd he’ll describe the old beliefs. Recounting the wars, maps of fizzled stars.// The replicas of replicas stacked like bricks. To titter at the gimcracks, the naive tools,// Our faulty eyes, our telltale heat, hearts// To uselessness with the mute acquiescence//

She places us into a museum with exhibits like “love and “illness.” In “The Museum of Obsolescence,” Smith says everything I’ve been thinking as of late. They are about space as an option for life, but also about everyday spaces and nuances. Smith is based around Smith’s father working on the Hubble Space Telescope, yet her poems transcend that idea. While I enjoyed both, I fell in love with the images of the unknown, of death and of celebrity that Tracy K. So far I’ve read Ideal Cities by Erika Meitner and Radial Symmetry by Katherine Larson. For the holiday season, I received many poetry books and gift cards to buy poetry books.

Life on mars by smith