If you have seen the space film “Ad Astra” — Latin for “to the stars”
— you likely marveled at its extraordinary special effects. As any fan
of effects-laden films knows, these feats of grand spectacle require
hundreds, if not thousands, of technical wizards to pull them off. You
almost forget that what you are seeing could not happen in reality but
only in a film studio.
Thus, if you are one of those people like me who stays to watch all a
film’s credits, you know that Ad Astra’s credit stream seems to go on
almost endlessly. My wife and I were sitting there in the IMAX theater,
eyes nearly glazed over by the monotony of seeing so many unfamiliar
names. Until one near the very end somehow jarred us into taking notice:
Tracy K. Smith.
The director, James Gray, had thanked the former U.S. poet laureate.
Smith served in the position for two years, from 2017 to 2019. I asked
my wife, “Is it really that Tracy K. Smith?” Then she reminded
me that Smith’s father had worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. And
then I remembered that Smith had written the Pulitzer-winning poetry
collection “Life on Mars.”
I was fortunate to travel with Smith during her “American Conversations“
tour of rural America. We were driving in the car and started talking
about musical artists we like. Smith mentioned that she loves David
Bowie (as do I). Knowing that “Life on Mars” shares a title with one of
Bowie’s early songs, I asked her what the song meant to her. She said
she thought he was writing about a “girl with the mousy hair” who is so
turned off by the craziness of life on Earth that she is asking, “Is
there life on Mars?” She is looking for a place where she can escape.
Alissa Williamson, writing for “Vox” about “My God, It’s Full of
Stars,” one of the poems in the “Life on Mars,” suggests what may have
inspired Gray:
“Smith invokes a variety of myths and stories, from the legend of the lost city of Atlantis to ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ It concludes with the perfect description of how history, humanity and space interact in an ultimate search for meaning.”
Here’s an excerpt, reprinted with Smith’s permission:
My father spent whole seasons
Bowing before the oracle-eye, hungry for what it would find.
His face lit-up whenever anyone asked, and his arms would rise
As if he were weightless, perfectly at ease in the never-ending
Night of space. On the ground, we tied postcards to balloons
For peace. Prince Charles married Lady Di. Rock Hudson died.
We learned new words for things. The decade changed.
The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamed
For all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe. The second time,
The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is—
So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.
via https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2019/10/ad-astra-and-former-poet-laureate-tracy-k-smith/
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