Tracer Workshop: Smith and Pop Culture

Welcome to the second Tracer Workshop! In these workshops, you will learn about specific techniques, stylistic choices, poetic decisions, etc. that Tracy K. Smith frequently uses and makes throughout her several books of poetry. I have “traced” such aspects of Smith's work across all of the collections that I have read thus far and will be sharing my findings, observations, and commentary with you via these workshops. 

This second workshop deals with the ways in which Smith uses pop culture references across several of her poems. This is most prominently demonstrated in her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Life on Mars. In my opinion, Smith's purpose in employing these sort of simple, well-known references in otherwise complicated pieces of poetry filled with ambiguity, complicated metaphors, distinct images, and difficult subject matters is to reach each of her readers. Given that her poems are so complexly layered and often merit a second, third, or even a fourth read to truly understand what lies at the heart of the piece, I feel that the pop culture references Smith employs serve as grounding devices – a technique that really allows Smith to engage in a sort of friendly, mutual dialogue with her readers and connect them with something almost tangible and comprehensible in an otherwise complex piece of writing. For me, this is extremely helpful as a reader of Smith's poetry. Without the grounding nature of the pop culture references Smith makes throughout a handful of her poems, it would be so easy to get lost in the text, swallowed up by the sheer complexity and intricacy of Smith's beautiful writing. Therefore, as a lover of Smith's work, I truly appreciate how she uses pop culture references in such a thoughtful, careful way.

Below are three poems that include various pop culture references, as well as a bit of commentary to go along with each poem. The references are highlighted in red.

Poem #1: "My God , It's Full of Stars" from Life on Mars

   1. 

 

We like to think of it as parallel to what we know,

Only bigger. One man against the authorities.

Or one man against a city of zombies. One man

 

Who is not, in fact, a man, sent to understand

The caravan of men now chasing him like red ants

Let loose down the pants of America. Man on the run.

 

Man with a ship to catch, a payload to drop,

This message going out to all of space. . . . Though

Maybe it’s more like life below the sea: silent,

 

Buoyant, bizarrely benign. Relics

Of an outmoded design. Some like to imagine

A cosmic mother watching through a spray of stars,

 

Mouthing yes, yes as we toddle toward the light,

Biting her lip if we teeter at some ledge. Longing

To sweep us to her breast, she hopes for the best

 

While the father storms through adjacent rooms

Ranting with the force of Kingdom Come,

Not caring anymore what might snap us in its jaw.

 

Sometimes,  what I see is a library in a rural community.

All the tall shelves in the big open room. And the pencils

In a cup at Circulation, gnawed on by the entire population.

 

The books have lived here all along, belonging

For weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence

Of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face,

 

A pair of eyes. The most remarkable lies.

 

 

          2.

 

Charlton Heston is waiting to be let in. He asked once politely.

A second time with force from the diaphragm. The third time,

He did it like Moses: arms raised high, face an apocryphal white.

 

Shirt crisp, suit trim, he stoops a little coming in,

Then grows tall. He scans the room. He stands until I gesture,

Then he sits. Birds commence their evening chatter. Someone fires

 

Charcoals out below. He’ll take a whiskey if I have it. Water if I don’t.

I ask him to start from the beginning, but he goes only halfway back.

That was the future once, he says. Before the world went upside down.

 

Hero, survivor, God’s right hand man, I know he sees the blank

Surface of the moon where I see a language built from brick and bone.

He sits straight in his seat, takes a long, slow high-thespian breath,

 

Then lets it go. For all I know, I was the last true man on this earth. And:

May I smoke? The voices outside soften. Planes jet past heading off or back.

Someone cries that she does not want to go to bed. Footsteps overhead.

 

A fountain in the neighbor’s yard babbles to itself, and the night air

Lifts the sound indoors. It was another time, he says, picking up again.

We were pioneers. Will you fight to stay alive here, riding the earth

 

Toward God-knows-where? I think of Atlantis buried under ice, gone

One day from sight, the shore from which it rose now glacial and stark.

Our eyes adjust to the dark.

 

 

          3.

 

Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone,

 

That the others have come and gone—a momentary blip—

 

When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic,

 

Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel

 

Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding,

 

Setting solid feet down on planets everywhere,

 

Bowing to the great stars that command, pitching stones

 

At whatever are their moons. They live wondering

 

If they are the only ones, knowing only the wish to know,

 

And the great black distance they—we—flicker in.

 

 

Maybe the dead know, their eyes widening at last,

 

Seeing the high beams of a million galaxies flick on

 

At twilight. Hearing the engines flare, the horns

 

Not letting up, the frenzy of being. I want to be

 

One notch below bedlam, like a radio without a dial.

 

Wide open, so everything floods in at once.

 

And sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time,

 

Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke.

 

So that I might be sitting now beside my father

 

As he raises a lit match to the bowl of his pipe

 

For the first time in the winter of 1959.

 

                  4. 

 

In those last scenes of Kubrick’s 2001

When Dave is whisked into the center of space,

Which unfurls in an aurora of orgasmic light

Before opening wide, like a jungle orchid

For a love-struck bee, then goes liquid,

Paint-in-water, and then gauze wafting out and off,

Before, finally, the night tide, luminescent

And vague, swirls in, and on and on. . . . 

 

In those last scenes, as he floats

Above Jupiter’s vast canyons and seas,

Over the lava strewn plains and mountains

Packed in ice, that whole time, he doesn’t blink.

In his little ship, blind to what he rides, whisked

Across the wide-screen of unparcelled time,

Who knows what blazes through his mind?

Is it still his life he moves through, or does

That end at the end of what he can name?

 

On set, it’s shot after shot till Kubrick is happy,

Then the costumes go back on their racks

And the great gleaming set goes black.

 

 

          5.

 

When my father worked on the Hubble Telescope, he said

They operated like surgeons: scrubbed and sheathed

In papery green, the room a clean cold, a bright white.

 

He’d read Larry Niven at home, and drink scotch on the rocks,

His eyes exhausted and pink. These were the Reagan years,

When we lived with our finger on The Button and struggled

 

To view our enemies as children. 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.

The last section of this poem especially is extremely telling of how Smith uses pop culture references to put all of her readers on an equal footing with her own personal experiences, thoughts, opinions, ideas, and identity. In this section, Smith focuses on well-known moments in time that are relevant and important to the time period she is describing in her own personal life. This ultimately makes her memories more familiar and digestible to her readers. With the pop culture info Smith provides, she is able to capture the spirit of the decade – years that fundamentally shaped her as an individual and that readers can now easily understand and connect with. 

Poem #2: "Dock of the Bay" from Such Color

Oh, Otis. For so long I did not know 

what you knew and sang of sweetly,

as if it were not piquant and heavy and bleak.

Fridays, my father crooned along, glass of amber

and ice in hand. I thought it was about ease,

the end of the week. Not the white world

snarling through its teeth. Looks like

nothing's gonna change.

Everything still remains the same. No, Otis,

we are not lazy. We are not even particularly angry.

But look how we strain beneath steady 

weather. Morning sun. Evening come. Otis –

Brother – the line of us shoulder to shoulder

under what will not go quietly into the ground.

In this poem, Smith discusses the evolution of her own personal understanding of the well-known song "Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay" by Otis Redding, which became an anthem of sorts for people of color during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s. But within this pop culture reference is a deeper message about race relations in America, specifically how African Americans (especially Smith) view themselves, their identity, and their history in relation to how these things have been portrayed by others through music, film, the media, etc. 

Poem #3: "Don't You Wonder, Sometimes" from Life on Mars

          1.

 

After dark, stars glisten like ice, and the distance they span

Hides something elemental. Not God, exactly. More like

Some thin-hipped glittering Bowie-being—a Starman

Or cosmic ace hovering, swaying, aching to make us see.

And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure

 

That someone was there squinting through the dust,

Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only

To be wanted back badly enough? Would you go then,

Even for a few nights, into that other life where you

And that first she loved, blind to the future once, and happy?

 

Would I put on my coat and return to the kitchen where my

Mother and father sit waiting, dinner keeping warm on the stove?

Bowie will never die. Nothing will come for him in his sleep

Or charging through his veins. And he’ll never grow old,

Just like the woman you lost, who will always be dark-haired

 

And flush-faced, running toward an electronic screen

That clocks the minutes, the miles left to go. Just like the life

In which I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky

Thinking one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands

Even if it burns.

 

 

          2.

 

He leaves no tracks. Slips past, quick as a cat. That’s Bowie

For you: the Pope of Pop, coy as Christ. Like a play

Within a play, he’s trademarked twice. The hours

 

Plink past like water from a window A/C. We sweat it out,

Teach ourselves to wait. Silently, lazily, collapse happens.

But not for Bowie. He cocks his head, grins that wicked grin.

 

Time never stops, but does it end? And how many lives

Before take-off, before we find ourselves

Beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?

 

The future isn’t what it used to be. Even Bowie thirsts

For something good and cold. Jets blink across the sky

Like migratory souls.

 

 

          3.

 

Bowie is among us. Right here

In New York City. In a baseball cap

And expensive jeans. Ducking into

A deli. Flashing all those teeth

At the doorman on his way back up.

Or he’s hailing a taxi on Lafayette

As the sky clouds over at dusk.

He’s in no rush. Doesn’t feel

The way you’d think he feels.

Doesn’t strut or gloat. Tells jokes.

 

I’ve lived here all these years

And never seen him. Like not knowing

A comet from a shooting star.

But I’ll bet he burns bright,

Dragging a tail of white-hot matter

The way some of us track tissue

Back from the toilet stall. He’s got

The whole world under his foot,

And we are small alongside,

Though there are occasions

 

When a man his size can meet

Your eyes for just a blip of time

And send a thought like SHINE

SHINE SHINE SHINE SHINE

Straight to your mind. Bowie,

I want to believe you. Want to feel

Your will like the wind before rain.

The kind everything simply obeys,

Swept up in that hypnotic dance

As if something with the power to do so

Had looked its way and said:

                                                     Go ahead.

This poem centers around the legendary David Bowie, who Smith hones in on as a way of considering existential questions about life, time, space and death – complicated topics that pose often unanswerable questions. However, Smith makes these very topics and questions much more understandable and exciting for readers through the many Bowie references she makes. In the fourth song of David Bowie’s album "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars," a child observes a "Starman" while listening to the radio and looking at the stars. David Bowie takes the role of Ziggy Stardust, the messenger of a Starman from outerspace trying to save the world – which is supposed to be destroyed in "five years" – with Rock’n Roll. Poetry and science-fiction here are closely linked, a connection that Tracy Smith presents in her collection, which is named from another song of David Bowie's, "Life on Mars." In this poem, Smith really invokes Bowie's spirit and his Starman persona in a reflection about childhood, hope, and the fleetingness of things and people.