Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith, the writer of the poem “My God, It’s full of Stars”, is an acquisitive young woman who was named as the US poet Laureate by the Library of Congress. “My God, It’s Full of Stars” is one of the poem from her Pulitzer Prize winning five-part poetry collection, “Life on Mars”. This poem is a tribute to her dad who worked as a scientist on the Hubble Telescope development whom she misses deeply. Joel Brouwer, an American poet, professor, and critic in his review of “Life on Mars” mentions,
In her elegies mourning her father’s death, outer space serves both as a metaphor for the unknowable zone into which her father has vanished and as a way of expressing the hope of existence hasn’t ceased, merely changed.
Tracy Smith, in her poem suggests that life continues in a different form of energy after death. On the contrary, Robert Frost, the writer of “Desert Places”, is an American poet and a receiver of four Pulitzer Prize for poetry (Robert Frost). In this poem, he describes the desert as the untamed landscape in relation to his own feelings …show more content…
Smith elaborates on a question that humans have been wandering about ever since we have looked up at the stars. The poem constantly revolves around the space and relates to the life after death. Typically, space and night are thought as dark and scary, but Smith focuses on the light that night brings. Smith, in her poem, celebrates confusing question-riddled relationship with the universe. Smith reminds us of the presence of absent forces. She presents space as not empty, but rather a host of our ungraspable things. As “My God, It’s Full of Stars” is a poem of optimism and hope, “Desert Places” is rather a depressing one. The speaker seems very lonely and empty like a desert. He speaks of his life as same as the desert which is barren and inert. He does not feel the presence of anyone and is unhappy and cold. The poem describes the feeling of insecurity within the human